


That's All

by shamelord69



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Racism, Anime Vagina, Cuckolding, Drug and Alcohol [Ab]use, Dubious Consent, M/M, Manpain, Minor Original Character(s), Orgasm Denial, Size Kink, Spaghetti, Sticky, Unsafe BDSM, pictures of genitals are in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 58,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamelord69/pseuds/shamelord69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rodimus, please don't interface with four Ammonite prostitutes."</p><p>"What, why? I'm not going to miss the shuttle, trust me. Look, if you think I can't get four aliens off in under an hour you've obviously not been paying attention to anything I've done to you in the past week."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Rodimus thought about it, Drift was kind of weird. 

He didn't remember exactly when he started fragging Drift — it couldn't have been that long after Rodimus had taken the helm of the Lost Light and properly settled in from its obligatory maiden disaster. Was it before Delphi? After Delphi? Rodimus had no idea; he had simply one day began smashing that. It was such a natural progression that it barely felt as if anything had become different in the first place — graduating to physically shoving his rod down Drift's throat honestly wasn't that radical a change from the probably professionally inappropriate degree of figurative fellatio in which they had previously been engaged. The amount of time Rodimus spent drunk probably didn't help his recollection any.

So, he _didn't_ much think about how weird Drift was. He didn't actively think about Drift much at all, really — or perhaps Drift was simply such an omnipresent feature of his mind that he didn't need to. Drift was just always there. He did everything with Drift; he spoke to him constantly, spent practically all of his time with him, and generally made all of his decisions with the granted assumption that his third-in-command would remain effectively grafted to his hip. Drift was integrated into Rodimus's life practically to the point that he was imperceptible as a distinct entity, like his shadow, if his shadow occasionally came over and started jacking him off _super_ enthusiastically.

Maybe the weird thing was how little all the weird things about Drift even registered. Most of it Rodimus just shrugged off with _uh, yeah, I guess I'd be a huge tryhard too if I used to be a Decepticon,_ or _haha yeah I guess killing like a million people and then hanging out with all their friends is probably awkward_ , or, _'achieving an asomatous apotheosis of the spirit via carnal commutation' is a metaphor for you're about to eat me out, right? Haha cool._ Some of it wasn't so easily explained, though — like the fact he never made a damn noise while getting railed. 

It wasn't just like Drift was a little quieter than normal. He had to be straight up manually disabling his voice box, because he certainly never had a problem producing copious amounts of unintelligible blather in other contexts. If you'd asked Rodimus a year ago if it would be weird trying to stimulate somebody who was just sort of sitting there, silently judging you, he would've been like, _hell yeah, that would be super weird and probably awful, I will check out of having that experience._ But it really _wasn't_ weird — he barely even noticed it after the first time, and the first time wasn't weird enough to even bother asking what the deal was. Rodimus never had to ask what the deal was. With Drift, the deal was simply the deal, and the deal was chill.

While Drift lacked in acoustic bluster, he was almost _obscenely_ expressive in every other metric. Rodimus spent his time with Drift with his attention rapt to the slightest of reactions, himself oddly hushed — or about as close as he could ever be voluntarily inclined. He couldn't hear Drift, but he could see it in the way Drift's optics flared in brilliant color, blind and uncontrolled until they sparked back into darkness; how the light of his hypercharged spark blared from the seams of his chest; from the straining tension in his cables, the curve of his frame arched up into every touch; the hitching of his vents and his trembling, gasping lips which formed words Rodimus needn't read to comprehend. And when Drift kissed him it was as if he were sure he were about to die, _painfully_ desperate and charged with a passion that burned Rodimus as readily as it enflamed him — Rodimus was never certain what it _was_ , how that felt, other than that it was dangerous and powerful and wild, and while he didn't know that he _liked_ it, he nevertheless found himself wanting more.

And Drift was always, always willing to give more, of everything he had to give. Drift's hands grasped for him purposefully, and when he ran his shaking fingers over Rodimus's plates it was in worship; Drift hungered for the most basic of contact with a lustful ferocity. Rodimus could kiss him anywhere — the tip of a finger, his lips, the cables of his neck, between his thighs — and Drift would dissolve, utterly robbed of any semblance of composure or restraint. He surrendered so easily, and so earnestly needed to please. It made Rodimus feel ridiculously powerful.

Touching Drift itself was a thrill. His frame coursed with palpable energy; just running his hands down Drift's sides would leave Rodimus with a contact high, and he felt himself just as ridiculous and needy as Drift as they rolled and kissed and rut against each other as if everything weren't quite enough. Rodimus was absolutely obsessed with Drift's body, and all of the apparently inexhaustible pleasures it had to give. If he didn't nominally have a number of duties that required his attention as captain, he wasn't sure he would do literally anything other than bang Drift.

Not that Rodimus didn't make a damned good effort at doing so _anyway_. For instance, he had just spent the last two or so hours eating Drift out. Like, just that, and he wasn't even close to bored. It ruled, and because Rodimus was an implacable titan of bestial prowess, he was completely prepared to keep going for the next six hours to Hedonia. The only thing that stopped him was Drift.

Drift's vocalizer sounded run ragged when he enabled it, even for all the work it hadn't actually been doing over the past hours. "Rodimus," he called out — but not in, like, a hot way. When he did let himself speak, it was never in _the hot way_. He actually wanted Rodimus's attention, apparently. Rodimus looked up from between Drift's legs to meet his gaze, but before Rodimus could ask what he wanted, Drift burst into laughter. "Haha, sorry, your face — it's just — yeah." 

Rodimus didn't exactly have a mirror on hand, but a quick touch to his faceplates gave him enough of an idea what he probably looked like. _Primus_ — he had this stuff splattered on his _forehead_. 

Drift also had a number of odd anatomical peculiarities, not the least of which being his decidedly overactive lubrication system. Considering the _also_ odd undersizing of his array, it was more a blessing than a curse during proper interface. But for oral — it wasn't like Drift tasted _bad,_ but perpetually gulping down mouthfuls of valve fluid over a long period of time was not Rodimus's foremost idea of fun. Instead, he elected to just let it run down his chin as it came — and in addition to turning whatever surface they happened to be upon into a slip-n-slide, it had the effect of completely saturating his face in fluids. He probably looked like a serial killer. Rodimus contemplated putting down a tarp.

Whatever. He didn't really care. It'd wash off. Rodimus wiped away the worst of the discomforting wetness and climbed up Drift's body to collapse beside him. "What's up?" he asked, propping his head up with his elbow. His free hand found Drift's and laced with it, absently playing with his fingers.

Drift looked to their hands with a small smile; from the sound of his vents, he was still coming down hard from the overload. Rodimus could feel the heat and electricity radiating from his frame. "I just — if you want to spike me, it should probably be, uh, soon. My systems are going to start malfunctioning if I overload more than... maybe once or twice more." Drift never glanced up from Rodimus's hand, transfixed where Rodimus was gently rubbing circles over the seams of his palm.

Rodimus laughed. "Does that _happen?_ I've never had that happen."

"It — yeah, it can happen. It sucks."

"All right. But nah, don't worry about it. I'm good. I already jacked off a couple times. Haha, did you not _hear_ it?" Rodimus sidled up closer to Drift, and shifted so he could slide his hand back between Drift's legs. It was like slipping his fingers into a vat of Teflon. "Touching you's enough."

Drift's vocalizer hitched as Rodimus probed inside of his body. Even as he returned to silence, Rodimus could see the shape of his name on Drift's lips.

Rodimus dropped his tone to a low rumble, and whispered, _romantically,_ "Come on, sit on my face."

Drift did not require especially much convincing to comply.

 

***

 

Rodimus ended up getting Drift off another three times before he had to call it quits.

It was hard not to be amused by the sight of Drift collapsing into a heap, heaving and utterly drained. Rodimus laughed easily as he laid down beside Drift and triumphantly took in the fruits of his labor. Drift's frame was crackling from the charge now — Rodimus watched with fascination as static visibly arced between Drift's shifting plates. Okay, yeah, Rodimus could see how that might mess with your systems. 

Drift shifted to lie on his side, facing Rodimus with a tired but thoroughly satisfied smile. Drift was tremendously easy to please. Rodimus just had to sort of _be_ there to reduce Drift to ecstasy, and the amount of appreciation he mustered in response to _actual effort_ was astounding. It was pretty gratifying for Rodimus to know he could affect someone so intensely.

"I didn't break you, did I?" Rodimus asked. He reached out to fondly brush his thumb over the edge of Drift's mouth; he could feel Drift's frame hum under his touch.

"Not — not quite," Drift answered, his voice disrupted by static. "I just... really shouldn't move for... a while."

Rodimus reached out to draw Drift against him; coming into contact with somebody so wired was an interesting sensation, to say the least. Everywhere Drift's body touched his tingled with electric energy — it occupied some nebulous fluctuating space between pleasant and unpleasant and Rodimus wanted to push him away and hold him closer in equal measure. He wondered how it felt for Drift.

Whatever the answer was, Drift wasn't in much of a state to communicate it. He pressed his face into Rodimus's neck, and wrapped an arm tightly around his waist; Rodimus shivered when Drift vented softly over his sensitive cabling. As the bright light of Drift's optics flickered and went out, and the buzzing energy ebbed out of his body, Rodimus realized Drift had straight up run out battery and powered down. _Damn._

Like hell he didn't feel smug about it.

Left to his own devices, Drift would be able to build up a bit of power on his own in recharge standby. But just because Rodimus was so damn _magnanimous,_ he extricated himself from Drift's death grip and exerted the energy necessary to jack him into the ship's recharging dock. Satisfied, he stepped back to observe Drift in his sleep. _Yeah,_ I _did that,_ he thought.

Drift looked peaceful, apart from the horrifying explosion of fluids covering his lower body. It looked like he'd detonated a bomb down there. _That_ was going to have to be Drift's problem.

Rodimus left out some energon for Drift to find when he woke up and slipped away to his quarters' washracks. He was going to need to take some serious time to thoroughly excavate all of Drift's dried up gunk from his cracks. It wasn't as if Rodimus _regretted_ the day's choice of recreational activities, but the impetus to maintain the flimsy veneer that he and Drift were _not_ interfacing like a swarm of horny scraplets made cleanup a bit of a drag. _Ugh._ Sometimes he wished Ultra Magnus would just follow through on his threats to leave already so Rodimus could just do whatever he wanted, as was his right as captain.

Unfortunately, Magnus and his stupid toaster slot head weren't actually going anywhere, and Rodimus didn't want to weather the six months of withering reprimands that would follow any hint that he and Drift were so engaged. Rodimus did his level best to clean his face; he had to return to the mirror three times to check for missed spots. There was always something stuck somewhere that got revealed when Rodimus assumed a certain facial expression. Eventually, he had to conclude that that was going to have to be the best he could do. When he emerged back into the main room of his quarters, reeking of chemical solvent, Drift was still sprawled out cold in his own mess.

For lack of anything better to do, Rodimus left his quarters to take a walk about the ship. Drift's capitulation was well timed — Rodimus figured they'd probably be entering within comms range of Hedonia fairly soon, so he just needed to kill a bit of time before then. He went down to the bar to have a little drink and idle chatter with the crew. Keep himself _Cybertronian,_ you know. The last thing he wanted was to come off like _Magnus._

It took much longer than he'd expected for Brainstorm to call him down to the bridge. He was starting to get antsy with nothing to do. Rodimus hated waiting.

He wasn't sure he recalled why he agreed to this in the first place. Like, sure, the drawings Brainstorm came up with of the Lost Light blowing up Decepticon warships with hyperpowerful proton missiles were _super_ cool, but now that he was faced with the prospect of actually having to sit through the tedious negotiations, he was less enthused. Honestly, he wouldn't have even bothered to sit in if he weren't sure that Brainstorm would end up haggling them into a deal _twice_ as illegal as whatever it was they were already involved in. Rodimus made a mental note to ensure Magnus was occupied for the transaction itself.

To his relief, Rodimus found that Perceptor was waiting with Brainstorm at the bridge when he arrived — that made things easier. He could _really_ check out on this monotonous confabulation now. 

Rodimus sat imperiously in his special captain's chair and commanded Brainstorm to hail the frequency he claimed was the key to mortiferous riches untold. Brainstorm and Perceptor were forced to stand at their captain's sides, because they weren't captain, and you didn't get to sit in the special chair unless you were captain.

The screen before them crackled with static for some time before they received an answer; unfortunately, the Hedonian alien who finally appeared on the screen was of a decidedly fleshy persuasion. It was wearing some ludicrously suspicious facial covering — to what purpose, Rodimus had no idea. Fleshlings all looked pretty much the same to him, distinguishable only by their inexplicable attachment to cloth bodily coverings. 

Rodimus wasn't exactly an expert on alien facial expression — he hadn't the first clue what this thing's species even was — but from what he could see through its mask's crude eyeholes, it looked pissed. It had no idea they were calling, evidently; upon reflection, Rodimus probably should have investigated what Brainstorm was getting him into more closely. "Who is this? How have you contacted this number?" the alien hastily demanded. At least it spoke something Rodimus could understand.

Rodimus leaned forward in his chair and produced his most bold and winning smile. "My name is _Rodimus Prime_ and I'm the cap—"

Brainstorm cut Rodimus off. "Whoa. I can't believe that number was actually real," Brainstorm said, gawking into the screen with incredulity. "And you aren't even an alien meatloaf hut or anything?"

The alien seemed poised to reply with admonishment, but Brainstorm's last comment caught it off guard. "I — Meatloaf hut?"

"Yeah? That's what you guys deliver out of your — delivery huts? It is, right? You know what I'm talking about — those loafs, the round ones, and they have your meats on them. I don't know what else to call them. You know what I mean?"

"Brainstorm," Rodimus tersely interjected.

"Look, I'm here to manufacture the deadliest weaponry in the known universe, not break down your dietary minutia —"

"Brainstorm."

"— see the briefcase? Of course you see the briefcase. No one who isn't extremely important is ever locked to a briefcase —"

"BRAINSTORM!"

Brainstorm wheeled on Rodimus like a whip, shouting back twice as loud, "WHAT?!"

"Brainstorm, you're making us look bad in front of the alien," Rodimus hissed. When he turned back to address the screen, he missed Brainstorm petulantly mouthing his words back at him with a sour face. "Sorry about him, he's new —"

"I'm not new!"

"— he's new and he doesn't know about things like not being insufferable. Anyway, we want to buy your missiles or whatever." 

Something reminiscent of a sigh escaped the alien's rattling glutinous maw as it raised a mitt planted full of spindly fingers to pinch the space between its massive orbitals. "Who put you in contact with us?"

Brainstorm postured ostentatiously, boastfully reclaiming his cause to speak. "I'm pretty savvy to the _Galactic Interweb,_ or as those of us _in the know_ call it, the 'gWeb'," he proudly proclaimed. "I was having a civil and reasoned debate about the comparative value of traditional rocket munitions against photon ballistics on the weapons subsection of a popular imageboard, and when I suggested that jet propulsion dominated the arms industry for a reason, a fellow poster informed me that if I ever found myself within Hedonia's orbit, I should call this number and be shown otherwise."

At first, the alien appeared skeptical of Brainstorm's claims — but after narrowing its bulbous eyes, it leaned its head offscreen to conduct a heated correspondence in a language Rodimus didn't recognize. It was a protracted exchange. When it returned to the screen, it looked wry. "S'grixlak informs me that you insulted his brood mother, and he intends to slit your throat and spill your blood upon the ground of his people," the alien relayed in disinterested deadpan. "He says, 'say that to my face, not online, and see what happens.'"

"Tell S'grexlax that it's not my fault that his brood mother is a quivering tower of lard, and that I'd like to see him try, and I challenge him to quite frankly come at me."

"I will not tell S'grixlak these things. I will instead tell him that you apologize and beg for his forgiveness. This is in your best interest."

"What? No! I am _not_ going to look like a weakling in front of S'grixlax. Put S'grisklax on the screen immediately and we'll finish this here and now."

Thankfully, the alien elected to ignore Brainstorm and return to business. "Is this line secure?"

For the first time since the call began, Perceptor spoke up. "Ah, yes. Extremely. We are operating on state-of-the-art communications technology; our encryption protocols..."

Rodimus didn't know what it was, but it was almost as if his neural system had built-in self-preservation code to completely block out all external stimulus whenever Perceptor began speaking. His optics glazed over and he sat back in his chair in an effort to at least look important. When he received a notification on his handheld comm, he fished it out to read its contents as inconspicuously as he could manage.

Rodimus only remembered where he was when his audial receptors caught a comment that was clearly directed at him.

"Are you _texting_ right now?"

Rodimus slowly looked up at Brainstorm with a dry stare. _Who did this guy think he was?_ "Uh... yeah," Rodimus answered; he managed to pack enough condescending derision into the short utterance that if Brainstorm continued to flout his authority he'd have to be _remarkably_ stupid.

Brainstorm was remarkably stupid. "Oh, _excuse_ me. I didn't mean to interrupt your attempts to make us look good in front of the _alien_."

_Ugh._ What a _pain._ "I assure you that this conversation is of the _utmost importance,_ " Rodimus lied. He cast a pointed glance back at the screen and the exceedingly exasperated alien featured thereupon. "The highly advanced neural processing system of a _Cybertronian Matrix-bearer_ —" 

"He's not even really a Prime, actually," Brainstorm clarified. 

"— is capable of executing more than one task at a time. I'm listening."

Rodimus _so_ wasn't listening.

It appeared that Rodimus picked a good point in the conversation to put his comm away and resume paying attention; Brainstorm and Perceptor — mostly Perceptor — had managed to reach an amenable agreement with the alien and the shanix figure Rodimus caught wasn't _too_ exorbitant. The Lost Light could swing that. The fleshling sent over the coordinates for where they would meet for the transaction itself, and closed the call without so much as a parting death threat. As far as alien communications went, this one hadn't been so bad. 

Rodimus was going to have to put together a team to go down for the arms deal. It was probably pretty illegal, which meant he had to get rid of Magnus, and he also had to maintain some semblance of discretion. He'd bring Perceptor and Brainstorm, because they already knew, and he'd bring Drift, because duh. Did they really _need_ more than that? _Eh._ Maybe he'd see if Ratchet would come along. He wasn't going to worry about it.

All that was left to do was make it the rest of the way to Hedonia without being bothered. Rodimus excused himself from bridge and briskly returned to his quarters; thankfully, no one stopped to harangue him about anything on the way. 

He let himself into his room. Everything was just as he'd left it, including the sight of Drift curled in his berth. He hadn't intended to disturb Drift at all, but it seemed Drift had set his recharge alert threshold pretty low — he began to stir as soon as he heard Rodimus enter the room. 

"Hey," Rodimus fondly greeted him; Drift smiled as he sat up, as inordinately pleased to see his captain as he always was. Rodimus crossed the length of the room with a purpose: he climbed onto the berth and unceremoniously slung an arm over Drift's chest, pushed him down and kept him pinned where he belonged by force of aggressive intimacy. It was kind of awkward with the ship's clunky recharge cable in the way. "You've got no business being up," Rodimus informed him with authority.

Drift seemed mildly surprised by being effectively body checked onto his back, but made no particular effort to resist the restraint. "I'm fine," he insisted. "I don't want to spend too much time asleep. I'll meditate later and —"

"You said you were tired," Rodimus reminded him. "So shhh. Shut off your eyes. Go to sleep. I'll be here, you big clingy loser. I swear, it's like I'm babysitting humans again."

Drift gave Rodimus a withering look, but acceded, "Maybe I'll get... just another hour. Then I'll be fine."


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttle touched down on Hedonia to the cover of darkness. 

Rodimus dutifully saw off the crew as they departed for shore leave, taking special care to ensure that Ultra Magnus would be nowhere nearby for the deal. He collected Perceptor, Brainstorm and Drift as the last of the stragglers filed off the ship, and took them aside for a simple briefing on the plan.

"Is Drift all who will be joining us as support?" Perceptor mildly inquired after observing the composition of the team. Rodimus didn't hear any condescension in the simple question, but Drift seemed to stiffen all the same. 

"We're all incredibly powerful, combat-ready geniuses," Rodimus scoffed. "You saw that alien — it was made of slimy twigs. It'd probably fall over dead from huffing one of my bad exhausts. I'm more worried about discretion than firepower, here."

Brainstorm gave Rodimus a sick look. "Remind me not to stand downwind of you any time soon."

"Where are these coordinates sending us to?" Drift asked, gazing out over the arid expanse of the cold desert surrounding them.

Perceptor consulted a device. He paced a short distance around where they were gathered, and Rodimus couldn't help but notice that Drift was compulsively repositioning himself so that Rodimus was between him and Perceptor at all times. He shot Drift a look, but didn't comment — and Perceptor didn't seem to have any concern for Drift's behavior. "The location is fifteen miles due east of here," he eventually said, looking out into the distance. There was nothing in that direction but the distant rise of mountain peaks. "This city is in isolation, as far as I can tell. The next populated area of civilization is another thirty miles away. This would suggest that they intend to draw us as far away from support as possible."

"So it's a trap," Drift concluded.

"Not necessarily. They may simply desire to avoid the detection of law enforcement. However, I would obviously advise caution and vigilance."

"Or I could just fly in ahead of you and shoot them all, leaving you free to roll in and take all of their stuff," Brainstorm helpfully suggested.

Rodimus dragged a hand down his face. "Brainstorm, if I'd wanted someone to commit Whirl-tier suicidally reckless acts of violence, I would have just brought Whirl in the first place."

"Well, don't come crying to me when this inevitably nose-dives into hell. If it were up to me, I'd have brought a dropship full of soldiers outfitted with my finest crea—"

Drift made a point of shifting to his alt mode and revving his engine loudly enough to drown out Brainstorm's stupid whining. "We should head out now. We're going to be late if we waste any more time."

Rodimus agreed. He transformed, and the rest of them followed suit; Rodimus took point and drove out into the wastes. The flat, desolate ground made for an easy ride, and there wasn't a soul to be found on the way.

It felt like they'd been driving for ages by the time the indistinct silhouettes of the arms dealers began to resolve in the distance. From what Rodimus could parse, there was a large truck accompanied by a small retinue of aliens; he couldn't really gauge their relative scale from the distance. 

All the same, nothing seemed to be cause for alarm, and they were pulling up to the meeting location before long. The four of them shifted modes as they approached — the truck more closely resembled a large armored transport vehicle from this distance, which may or may not have been suspicious, but the group of five fleshy aliens stood in front of it were not of any sort of intimidating build or stature. They came up to chest height, maybe, and all had spindly limbs and bulbous heads. Rodimus managed recognize the one in the center as the alien they'd spoken to on the ship from its conspicuous mask; it was even shorter and frailer than the other four. 

The masked alien greeted them amicably. "Good evening. I trust your journey was pleasant."

"Uh, sure," Rodimus said. He wanted to get this out of the way. "Where're the goods?"

The alien gestured, and at once, the doors to the armored vehicle swung open. A score of fleshlings emerged, hoisting a load of crates between them. They were also, notably, absolutely festooned with guns. 

"Welp," Brainstorm said, placing his hands on his hips. His mutter was barely audible. "Looks like somebody expects there to be a blowout."

Just when it seemed like the last alien had filed out of this ridiculous clown car of a tank, a thunderous rumble sounded from the back of the carrier. The vehicle shook as a massive fist shot out from the darkness; it slammed down onto the floor to pull the beast behind it into the light. In a great effort, it hauled itself out of the vehicle and spilled onto the arid ground.

The monster appeared to have been curled up in the back of the tank, lying in wait — it relished in a tremendous roar when it was afforded the opportunity to stand up and stretch to its full, horrifying height. Every inch of its frame bulged with tumescent muscles, piled over each other in impossible, bulky layers, and its skin may as well have been made of rocks. As if that weren't enough, it was clothed entirely in weapons — it wore a shirt of bandoliers, a belt of swords and a rattling loincloth of grenades. There were also at least six guns strapped to each of its arms, of which it happened to have four. 

Well, uh. That was... something.

At the barked command of the tremendous beast, the smaller aliens carried over the crates, dropped them at Rodimus's feet, and popped open the lids for his inspection. Perceptor and Brainstorm seemed wary of the heaving monster towering over them as they approached the cargo.

"If everything appears to you as it should, we shall conduct the monetary transaction," the masked alien pronounced.

"Okay, sure, but, uh, what's the deal with your friend here?" Rodimus asked, staring up at the enormous titan. Its numerous eyes all focused upon Rodimus. A string of drool quivered threateningly from its massive jowl.

"S'grixlak personally oversees every exchange involving his creations," the small alien said. It looked up to S'grixlak when he rumbled his own inquiry. "Ah. S'grixlak informs me that he wishes to know which of you is the individual he had the privilege of conversing with online."

Perceptor and Rodimus both looked pointedly at Brainstorm, who seemed to hesitate before answering, "Uh, that was... me."

S'grixlak bared his teeth. Rodimus may as well have been gazing straight into the mouth of hell.

"Brainstorm," Rodimus said, stare fixed immovably upon the giant lumbering sack of knives before them. "Why did you bring us into the middle of a barren desert with a 50 foot tall, heavily armed, incredibly angry alien hulk man? Why did you do this?"

Brainstorm took a step back. "I... I... when he said he was a _troll_ I never imagined..."

The thin masked alien made a point of backing away as it translated S'grixlak's guttural howls. "S'grixlak demands that you hand over the small blue toy man. S'grixlak says that small blue toy man must pay for his treasonous vituperations. He says that his brood mother is a flawless and beautiful woman, rest her soul. He says that if you peaceably part with both your ruffian and your money, we will allow the rest of you to leave unharmed with the cargo. Otherwise, we intend to reclaim it, along with your lives."

"All right. Well, I'm out," Brainstorm announced, and summarily prepared to change to alt mode and leave. He made an ineffectual gesture, and then, in realization, sighed. "Of _course._ "

"Do not bother attempting to transform and escape," the alien said. The warning came a bit late. "You are standing within an inhibitor field."

"An _inhibitor fi_ — oh, for _Adaptus' sake._ You're not even going to bother to explain how that's supposed to work, or how you deployed it in the middle of a desert completely undetected by us, are you?"

Perceptor adjusted his eyepiece. "Well —"

"Perceptor, that was so intensely rhetorical that not even you could have misconstrued that as an invitation to speak."

Rodimus looked to Brainstorm, and then back to S'grixlak, and then to all of S'grixlak's guns. There was pretty much no chance any of them were leaving this desert alive if they just charged these guys, and _Brainstorm_ certainly wasn't worth dying over in such a stupid way. "Okay, well, the choice here is obvious..."

"Yes," Drift said, and, like an idiot, drew his blades. "Stand down now, before this comes to blows."

S'grixlak, and his innumerable horde of lackeys, immediately raised and readied their weaponry. Rodimus just about panicked; he flung an arm out in front of Drift to stop him from getting them all killed. "Drift, wait, wait, wait, stop!"

Drift looked at Rodimus incredulously. "We can't just let them _take_ Brainstorm," he said.

"Okay, yeah, maybe not, but we can't just _fight_ them — OBVIOUSLY. We're outnumbered six to one! Look at their guns! We'll _die._ "

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Drift demanded.

Rodimus dropped his voice to a whisper. "Uh, like, maybe we can come back and rescue him, or, uh — Perceptor, you're the _genius,_ have any —" Rodimus turned his head to look to Perceptor, but jumped when he found that _Brainstorm_ had inched behind him instead. "What are you doing?! Get out from behind me!"

"Hold still, moron," Brainstorm said. "I'm _doing_ something."

"Do it _not_ between me and all the guns!"

Brainstorm was busily fiddling with an object Rodimus couldn't discern. "I need you in front of me so they won't see the thing I'm doing!"

"They aren't deaf, either, you waste of space!" Rodimus threw a worried glance at the group of aliens, who seemed more confused by their bickering than anything. "Okay, I think our best option might be —"

Before Rodimus had a chance to react, he was shoved over and sprawled face-first in the sand. The sound of blasterfire rang out over his head. He rolled onto his back as quickly as he was able and readied his weapons to retaliate, but by the time he regained visuals, it was already over — Brainstorm was standing triumphantly over a decidedly shrunken cabal of aliens.

"Not so natty anymore, Grickles!" Brainstorm gloated, waving his gun and briefcase in the air maniacally. The tiny little army was blasting its guns at his feet to no avail. "Oh, come on, don't be stupid. I've won, and you've lost, and I could quite easily step on all of you and be done with it if I wanted to. You're at _my_ mercy, now." Some of them made attempts to run away — Brainstorm just stooped down and pushed them all back together. Humming, he constructed a small wall of sand around the huddled ring of terrified miniaturized aliens and effectively trapped them where they stood.

Rodimus scrambled to his feet, livid. "What the hell were you thinking?!" he demanded. "I could've... you could've gotten us blown up!"

Brainstorm turned back to regard Rodimus dismissively. "Well, uh, I didn't, so."

"That isn't the point!"

"You're just mad that _I_ got us out of this and _you_ didn't," Brainstorm said, sounding supremely smug. " _You_ were going to let them take me away and — and _probe_ me!"

"What!? No I wasn't!" Rodimus seethed. Who the hell did this guy think he was!? See if _he_ ever got a Rodimus Star again.

"You _said_ it!"

"I — but — I wasn't going to _leave_ you with them! Just buy us enough time to call for backup! It was the safest option!"

"Since when do _you_ care about 'the safest option'? The option most likely to spare your precious finish, more like it."

"How about this: I'll shoot both of you if you don't stop," Perceptor cut in, tone remarkably even and personable for a death threat. "Let's just take the payload and get out of here, shall we?"

Drift felt the need to object. "Wait. I think we should return them to original size," he said — Rodimus, Perceptor and Brainstorm all looked at Drift like he was crazy. He appeared momentarily discouraged by the unanimous reaction of disbelief, but he found his courage and soldiered forward with explaining his ridiculous reasoning. "See, this is going to leave us with a _karmic burden_ going forward — the universe corrects all wrongs in the end. We should wash our hands of this now by showing them mercy."

For once, Rodimus and Brainstorm found common ground; they each looked to each other with identical expressions of _are you fragging kidding me._ Only Perceptor appeared to be giving this any thought at all — he took a moment to deliberate before he spoke up, "It's true that it may strain our political relationships with Hedonia, and this could impede the peaceful reintegration of Cybertron into the galactic community. It's quite possible that clemency may be in the best interest of our future as a race."

Brainstorm made a face. "Or I could just _step on them now_ and know one will ever know we were even here?"

"And then we would be no better than _the Decepticons,_ and we will pay for it," Drift said.

"Wow, is this real? Are you kidding me here? Is this happening? Am I really getting lectured about being better than the Decepticons by _a god damn Decepticon!?_ "

"Shut _up,_ Brainstorm," Rodimus snapped. "Drift is _not_ a Decepticon."

"I — wh— but he _is_. He factually is a Decepticon. He has spent demonstrably, measurably, an _infinite times many more portions_ of his life as a Decepticon than any of us — which, for reference, is _zero portions._ "

Rodimus sneered. To be perfectly honest, he had no real investment in seeing these fleshling backstabbers returned to normal — the only reason he was going along with this was that Brainstorm was being a real bibcock today, and he thought Drift was cute. "Brainstorm, fix them."

Brainstorm gestured incredulously. "You can't be serious. I _heroically rescue us all_ from certain death and now you're asking me to put us right back into the hot seat?"

"They're no danger to us," Drift insisted. "Just turn them back one by one, and I'll disarm and incapacitate all of them."

Brainstorm seemed sincerely intent upon arguing the point to death, but Rodimus threatened to take away his workshop and he wasn't confident enough in Rodimus's insincerity to call the bluff. He refused to accede with anything but the most aggravating of histrionics, though — he had a snide little complaint for every mook he zapped for Drift to swiftly disarm and command to kneel. Perceptor gathered up all the guns; may as well take those with the missiles.

"Okay, nobody can make me put _this_ guy back to full size," Brainstorm stated. No one argued. He adjusted the settings on his gun, fixed it on S'grixlak and restored him to a size _just_ small enough to not pose a threat. Brainstorm insisted that he be the one to brusquely push S'grixlak to his knees and kick all the guns off his arms.

Something of an odd scene unfurled. S'grixlak looked up at Brainstorm in awe, and then down to his hands, and then he looked to the spindly alien who served as his mouthpiece lain out in the sand some few paces away. Nobody stopped him when he climbed to stand and lumbered over to where it lay. He helped it back up to its feet, gently brushing the sand from its body. It stared up into all of S'grixlak's rheumy eyes with a transfixed wonder; they shared a short exchange in their guttural language. When the thin alien looked back to Rodimus and his crew, it was with a smile. "S'grixlak thanks you," it said.

Brainstorm boggled. "Excuse me, what?"

"S'grixlak thanks you," the alien repeated. "S'grixlak had long wished that he were born smaller, or I larger; for all our lives, we have been separated by our differences in species and size. Our physical disparity has kept us from full intimacy. Now, we can truly be together as man and wife — this is a tremendous blessing to us both."

Nobody seemed to know how to react to this. Rodimus looked to Drift, and then Perceptor, and then Brainstorm, and all of the diverse range of surprise, exhaustion and disgust they displayed.

"Um... congratulations," Drift said.

Rodimus sighed. "Let us _please_ leave."

 

***

 

With the arms deal out of the way and the cargo safely and discretely loaded onto the shuttle, they were free to enjoy the rest of their stay on this garbage little planet. Brainstorm and Perceptor headed off, to do god knows what — Rodimus didn't care, or ask. Drift took him aside to see what his plans were. 

"I was just gonna sit and wait in the shuttle, probably," Rodimus said with a shrug. "That was a lot of death we almost just did."

"There are hours left before it leaves. We could go out and do something," Drift suggested. He kept throwing furtive glances around to be sure no one was listening.

"Yeah, I guess. You want to see if we can catch up with the guys for drinks or something?"

"I was thinking we could... I don't know." Drift turned to look out at the city lights in the distance. "See the sights. Just the two of us."

Well, why not? Sitting around on the shuttle doing nothing for hours wasn't so enticing a prospect that Rodimus was going to shoot him down. "All right. Sure. Where do you want to go first?"

Drift looked back to Rodimus with a smile. "Anywhere is fine if you're there."

Well, that turned out to be a load, because Drift had zero enthusiasm for Rodimus's excellent suggestion of going down to the bars — worried about running into Ultra Magnus and all of his article codes on fraternization or whatever, Rodimus presumed — but he was eventually able to convince Drift to relent. They managed to find a crappy mech-friendly dive in a bad part of town that Drift was reasonably confident that nobody on the crew would show up at (Rodimus got to try out his holomatter avatar, and was distressed to discover he couldn't get his collar to stay popped — he'd get Brainstorm to fix it later when he didn't want to kill him anymore). Rodimus was skeptical that the location wouldn't make it _more_ probable that they would have an encounter, but since he did not actually care, he didn't bother to voice an objection. It wasn't like they were going to start docking on the bartop — so what if they ran into anybody?

Drift politely declined all of Rodimus's pushy offers to buy him drinks, so there was no point in trying to get _really_ sloshed. Where's the fun in being the _only_ drunken idiot at the table? Rodimus settled for downing just enough to reach a pleasant buzz, and then the two of them retired to a booth in the back corner of the bar that, while not exactly _private,_ was sufficiently out of the way for Drift to relax.

Rodimus found that he was in a good mood. The engex helped, but so did the company. He had an easy time being around Drift — for an ex-con, the guy was remarkably laid-back, and just about as agreeable a person as any Rodimus had ever met. So maybe Drift was a _bit_ of a sycophant, but Rodimus wasn't going to pretend that he didn't enjoy the _hell_ out of some quality aftkissing. Sometimes, a little "you're exactly right, Rodimus" or two or five or sixteen a day was what he needed. His extraordinarily tight snatch also helped.

It was probably weird to feel so comfortable in the back of a seedy dive bar, just about ready to conk out with his head against Drift's shoulder, but there he was. Drift brought everything back to what really mattered: Rodimus, and how great he was. No need to worry about anything else.

Rodimus got their evening going with an invasive line of questioning. "So, what's the deal with you and Percy?" he asked; Drift immediately stiffened under his touch. Sore subject, he guessed.

Drift insisted otherwise, though. "There's not really a deal."

"Really? I could've sworn you guys were a _thing._ "

"Um..." Drift paused uncomfortably. "It was more like... one of those things where... you know. Where there's sort of a _thing_... but nobody _talks_ about it being a thing. So we never really... and I wasn't ready to, anyway, back then. It would've been a bad idea. Probably." 

"Oh. So you _wanted_ to frag him, but you wussed out before he actually slipped you the beam." 

"I —" Rodimus could practically see the processes stuttering in Drift's head. "I... um. Not exactly. I mean — I don't think I was really ready when I did it with you, either. But, uh — Perceptor, uh, haha — I guess he..." Drift took a moment to search for a delicate phrasing. "... respected me more than you did?"

Rodimus got halfway through a smug snigger before the obvious occurred to him. "Haha, yeah, I — actually, If somebody were like, a cop, that thing you just said might sound bad," Rodimus admitted. He looked up at Drift through the haze of engex with something he hoped parsed as sincerity. "I didn't _mess up,_ did I?"

"Oh!" Drift seemed guilty for having made the suggestion. "Um, no. I don't think so. I'm fine. I'm good, even. I'm not sure I would have ever just... _gotten over it._ On my own. It'd been — well, a long time."

"Well, if you ever need a wingman to pick up that idiot mathmachine, I'm here for you, buddy. It's never too late to get screwed."

Drift smiled. "No, it's okay. I'm happy just being with you."

That kind of came as a surprise. Rodimus pulled back to look quizzically at Drift. "Wait, you aren't banging anybody else at _all?_ "

"I... no?" Drift appeared confused by the suggestion. 

Oh, jeez. "... _How_ long had it been since you interfaced with anybody besides me?"

"Well..."

"What, since you'd left the Decepticons?"

Drift's ensuing pause verged on tortuous. "Uh... no. Before I'd _joined_ the Decepticons, even."

"... You're kidding me," Rodimus laughed. He slumped back against the seat of the booth and smacked a hand to his face. "Primus, you're practically a _virgin._ I _despoiled_ you."

Drift almost sputtered. "I'm the furthest thing from a virgin you could even _imagine,_ trust me."

" _Four million years!_ After a certain point it stops even _counting,_ " Rodimus said. He was grinning, but the longer he thought about the subject, the further his mind wandered into unpleasant territory. He chose to partake in his drunkness-maintenance drink before he broached the awkward topic. "I hope this isn't like, offensive or anything, but — how the _hell_ did you manage four million years in the Decepticons without somebody fragging you? You're, uh, kinda hot, and the Decepticon army wasn't exactly known for its _moral scruples._ "

Something of a lopsided smile appeared on Drift's face. It looked forced. "People _tried,_ " he said. "But I didn't make it this long by being _defenseless._ "

"And your superiors or whatever never tried anything? You couldn't have gotten away with cutting off _Turmoil's_ spike."

Drift hesitated to even answer the question, and his voice sounded shrunken when he finally spoke. "Megatron protected me."

Rodimus laughed forcefully. The sentence by itself sounded ridiculous, let alone the mental image. "I'm having a hard time picturing that," he said.

Drift snorted. "He didn't come and _hold my hand_ while I walked through the barracks at night. I told him, and he made it clear that anyone else who tried to touch me would suffer the consequences," he said. Drift gazed away at something far more distant than the wall his eyes were fixed upon. "There was a reason that so many of us followed him. The atrocities he committed — we committed — I don't excuse them. But if you'd known him — heard him speak in the beginning when everything was reaching the breaking point — I don't know. Megatron was... nevermind. I don't know."

Rodimus honestly took a moment to think about it, but he couldn't avoid the reflexive churning in his tanks that built in response to positive ideation of _Megatron._ "Yeah, sorry, Megatron was kind of the most horrible mass murderer in the history of time. He doesn't get a pass for his oratory skills."

"I — okay. I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I don't know why I brought that up. Forget it," Drift said, and moved to stand. "I'm going to head back —" 

Rodimus's hand reflexively shot out to grab Drift by the wrist. "What? Come on, we just barely _got_ here."

"I just —" Whatever protest he'd come up with died in his throat when Rodimus gently tugged him back down to sit. "Fine. Let's just not talk about... Deadlock."

"All right, sure," Rodimus agreed — he then helpfully invited himself to lay down with his head on Drift's lap, to make it all the harder for him to leave. Drift's annoyance seemed to indicate he knew what Rodimus was doing, but he made no attempt to push him off. "Okay. So, how do you think Chromedome and Rewind even _do_ it?" Rodimus asked; this was about as enlightening as any topic of conversation the two of them had broached in the past.

The mood whiplash seemed to take Drift by surprise. "... Sorry, what?"

"You know — how do they frag? Rewind is so tiny. And Chromedome is so... not."

Drift appeared to take a moment to contemplate the mental image before he replied, "That's a good question." He paused. "Maybe Rewind tops."

Rodimus shook his head. "There's no way Rewind is big enough to even tickle the sides of Chromedome. They can't have been together this long going off just _that._ And they don't even have proper mouths! I mean, I _guess_ they could just finger or whatever — but man, nothing beats a good spiking, you know?"

"Maybe Chromedome got a spike reduction."

"That's literally the saddest thing I have ever heard of in my life. I don't believe that's real."

Drift laughed softly, and began gently running his fingers over the ridges of Rodimus's crown. It felt good. This was better. Rodimus sighed and let his optics fall offline. "They might still use the old system — the one with all the... cables, and plugs," Drift suggested.

"Oh _Primus, boring._ How could you see a single porno and still _use_ that now? I mean, the messy system is _obviously_ better. Plus, like — Chromedome was constructed cold, right? Everyone was being brought online with the new arrays at that point. I dunno how old Rewind is — maybe he's old enough to still have one. But Chromedome, no way. Rewind _had_ to have upgraded."

Drift was quiet for a moment. "Maybe... they don't. Maybe they don't interface at all."

"What? Come on." Rodimus weakly lifted a hand to swipe at the air, but swiftly realized moving was too much work and let it fall back into rest. "You can't just... _not interface._ That's crazy. What would they even _do_ together? What's the point?"

"I don't know. They might just enjoy each other's companionship. Maybe."

Rodimus let out a dismissive huff. "Yeah, right. Why even be _together_ in the first place, then? Why not just be friends? It's not like I get why anyone would want to _bond themselves to one person for life_ in the first place, but there has to be something more to it than that. They've _gotta_ have some way of getting down and dirty."

"Hmm." Drift always managed to bring an air of bafflingly genuine contemplation to any topic. Rodimus turned back on his eyes just so he would be able to see Drift's free hand pretentiously braced against his own chin, gaze directed skyward. "Maybe they do spark play. Some people still do that, right?"

"Oh, yeah. I'd totally forgotten that was even a thing," Rodimus said. "Haha, yeah, maybe that's it. They seem like the type to do that. All... _feelsy,_ with their _feelings?_ Weird." Drift's hand stilled where it lay on Rodimus's helm; Rodimus immediately objected. "Hey, don't stop. That feels good." Then it hit him. " _Oh._ And Rewind is into _snuff_ — I told you that Rewind is into snuff, right? Frickin' weird — and Chromedome has all those _memories_ — ugh. _Ugh._ That's _totally_ what they do. _Gross._ Great. Ugh." 

"That is pretty gross," Drift agreeably confirmed, though it didn't quite sound like he actually _cared_ at all. It was a while before Drift seemed to conjure up the nerve to ask, "Have you ever done it with anyone?"

"What, spin my spark to the snuff juice out of my conjunx's memorybank of grizzly murders? Haha. But yeah, uh, once, millions of years ago. Before the war and all. It sucked and was super weird," Rodimus said. Just recalling the memory was unpleasant so he quickly stopped doing so. "Never again."

"Not even with me?" Drift kept a level tone, as if he were verifying the state of the weather. He appeared primarily focused on petting Rodimus diligently. 

It didn't require Rodimus much thought. "Ugh, no. Spark play just too... _too,_ you know?"

"Too too?"

"Yeah. Too _too_. It's all, like, whoa, sticking somebody in my _soul,_ like, no thank you or whatever. You know?"

Drift nodded in agreement, but didn't seem to have anything to contribute. Rodimus took it as an invitation to keep rambling. "That whole wheelhouse... of — of —" Rodimus made an unintelligible gesture. "It's just not really my thing. It's the kind of stuff people like — people like _Chromedome and Rewind_ would worry about. I don't want to be _Chromedome and Rewind._ I like being _me._ And I like being with people who are... _them._ I don't wanna be the _same thing_ with another person. It's just so... overwhelming." Well, Rodimus was clearly either too drunk or not drunk _enough._

"I see. Okay."

"I think that's why I like you so much," Rodimus concluded. "You're so chill. You just take things a day at a time. We are what we are, and that's all that we are. You know?"

Drift made a small affirmative noise and let it drop there. Rodimus was content to relax back into the indistinct chatter of the bar and the soothing rhythmic motions of Drift's fingers over his helm, but the slow machinations of Rodimus's dulled brain finally made a connection that forced his optics back online. "Wait, do _you_ want to?" Rodimus asked, staring up at Drift's face with cautious scrutiny. He jabbed a finger into his own chest for emphasis. "With _me_?"

"What? Oh, um, no. Of course not." Something shifted in Drift's expression. "I mean... if you don't want to. I mean — I don't want to anyway, but if you don't want to, I _definitely_ don't want to, either. Doing something we both don't want to do — that sounds like a bad thing to do."

"All right, cool. I agree."

"Cool," Drift said.

 

***

 

Rodimus left the bar significantly drunker than he'd ever intended to get.

Of course, that's _always_ how it happened. Sober, it was very clear that there was no point in passing a certain threshold — but once he actually got there, _that_ assessment hardly mattered.

Rodimus had to lean on Drift to walk, which he took as an opportunity to behave in lasciviously handsy manner. Drift did not especially appreciate it. They probably created a bit of a spectacle. Drift repeatedly assured the scandalized onlookers they passed that Rodimus was drunk, he couldn't help himself, he wasn't _trying_ to be indecent — but in the end fleshlings seemed _really weirded out_ by the slightest suggestion that robots might might be capable of doing the nasty. Were they just confused about the logistics? Rodimus would be glad to show them. (He said this out loud. Drift announced a passionate longing for death.)

Amid the writhing throng of oily, squishy, squashable aliens, the pair happened upon a more familiar sight. There, on the street corner, stood a group of small but definitely mechanical aliens. They must be hookers, Rodimus concluded.

"Drift, hey! Bring me over there to talk to the hookers," Rodimus demanded.

Drift stopped in his tracks. "Why?"

"C'mon, just do it. The little guys, on the street corner! Why else would they be standing there? That's where hookers _hook._ "

Drift was not moving. Rodimus was unhappy that Drift was not moving. So, Rodimus detached himself from Drift and did some moving himself — though it'd probably be better categorized as "shambling". Drift followed after him only once it became clear that Rodimus would allow nothing to stop him from hassling these bots.

"Hey! Hey! Yeah, you guys. Whatever you are. How much?"

Drift arrived back at Rodimus's side and took him by the arm, but he wouldn't budge. One of the alien bots looked up from his conversation with his compatriots, understandably confused. "Excuse me?"

A sloppy grin worked its way across Rodimus's face. He wrenched his arm free of Drift's grip and slung it back over his shoulders, destabilizing them both. Drift only barely managed to stop him from toppling to the ground. "Hey," Rodimus said, attempting some mockery of a sultry purr. "Me and my buddy here are looking for a good time. How's 50 shanix sound?"

Drift protested, "I am _NOT_ —"

"Shhhh, shhhh," Rodimus hushed him. He gently placed a finger to Drift's lips — or, uh, tried to. He just sort of smushed Drift's face. "Let Roddy do the talking. I'm a businessman. I know things."

"Uh, I think there's been a misunderstanding," an alien suggested. Rodimus had no idea what he was talking about. Were aliens _stupid?_ They were so small, there probably wasn't enough room for good code like the kind that Rodimus had to make him really smart and good at everything and also incredibly attractive to everyone. He could see a little reflection of himself in Drift's eyes right then and _damn_ did he look good.

"Rodimus," Drift pleaded.

"Come on, it'll be fun! You need to have more fun, Drift. Doctor's orders. I'm a doctor. A _love_ doctor. Hehehehe, _god,_ I'm funny — I always laugh at my own jokes, like, at least on the _inside_. Do you do that? I'm not the only one, right?"

"I'm not going to — Rodimus, there's only an hour until the shuttle leaves. We need to get back."

"We can go back right after this!"

Drift looked like he was kinda sick. The will to argue was clearly ebbing out of him. He affixed Rodimus with just about the saddest look he'd ever seen, and begged, "Rodimus, please don't interface with four Ammonite prostitutes."

"What, why? I'm not going to miss the shuttle, trust me. Look, if you think I can't get four aliens off in under an hour you've obviously not been paying attention to anything I've done to you in the past week."

Drift's mouth opened and closed what felt like countless times as he struggled to find something to say in response. It quickly became clear that he was not going to.

Rodimus sighed. He turned to Drift, gently lifted a hand to his face, and pressed his lips against Drift's uncharacteristically nonpliant mouth.

Kissing Drift _always_ worked — it hadn't taken Rodimus long to learn that all he needed to do was take Drift into his arms, gaze soulfully into his eyes and kiss him on the lips and anything he asked for would be his. So, when Rodimus pulled back only to find Drift staring back at him as resolutely as ever, he was perplexed.

"... Does anyone care we that aren't prostitutes?" one of the Ammonites (is that what they were? Rodimus had no idea) ventured.

"Mhmm," Rodimus answered, not listening. What was Drift's _problem?_ Oh, well, whatever. After a moment of awkward silence, Rodimus just clapped Drift on the shoulder with finality and told him, "Just head back without me. I'll catch up with you later. I _promise._ All right?"

Drift looked down at the hand on his shoulder with a grimace, but when his gaze lifted back up to Rodimus, he seemed to have accepted his defeat. "I..." He set his jaw and self-consciously corrected his posture, bringing himself to stand just a bit taller than Rodimus. "Okay. See you... later."

"Cool. Later."

With Drift on his way, Rodimus turned back to the huddle of Ammonites and grinned. "C'mon. Don't I look like a guy who knows how to party? And there's no party like a _Cybertron_ party. Trust me, we go so hard we _can't_ go home."

The small group of mechs exchanged dubious glances. One, who had previously remained silent, piped up and said, "You know... uh. Is there a reason not to?"

Another shrugged. The other two seemed to take a longer moment to think about it, but, eventually, they mirrored the motion of the first. "Make it 100."

"You've got yourself a _deal._ "


	3. Chapter 3

"Hey Drift, does my valve look funny to you?"

This question was perhaps not one that Drift particularly desired to hear the first thing out of recharge, but Rodimus asked it all the same. "Uh... what?" Drift replied, groggy.

"Okay, look, I was bored waiting for you to wake up so I was screwing around with myself and I noticed something a little — just tell me what you see down there, all right?"

Drift shot Rodimus a withering look before he sidled down Rodimus's body to peer suspiciously between his legs. Rodimus slid back his panel — something that proved to be a surprising effort, which was probably in itself a sign — and the displeasured contortion that seized Drift's features was confirmation enough. "Eugh," Drift said, recoiling. "Yeah, uh, you've definitely got some... some rust down there."

"Some _rust_? How could I have —" Rodimus shot a hand down between his legs to check again. Yeah... that kind of did feel like rust, once he thought about it. " _Primus._ "

Drift sat back, putting a comfortable distance between himself and Rodimus's nasty rusthole. "Don't you... don't you wash it out?" He looked quite ill.

"Ew, yes, of course I wash my valve. I'm not _gross,_ " Rodimus said. "Okay, so you remember Hedonia — okay, yeah, I may have raw plogged all those Ammonite hookers, I guess."

Drift slowly looked up to meet Rodimus's eyes. His expression was completely blank. Rodimus took this as invitation to continue his explanation.

"I know what you're thinking. _How could you let those aliens drop their cargo in your hangar? That's not safe!_ But I totally didn't. I did _not_ let four aliens of questionable origin deposit fluids into my body — actually, they all formed up into one alien halfway through and that was _kind of awesome_ — _but,_ it's possible that there _may_ have been a hab suite, uh, _party_ that I broke up last week and by broke up I mean I may have shown up drunk and convinced Skids to leave and blow me in a utility closet? And then let him go back to the, uh, the party. And then I may have let him drill me later. Like, a little. Or it could've been — okay, I'm not saying I'm in the habit of letting half the ship's crew run train on me or anything, but anyway, that's _one_ explanation for how the rust jumped."

After a moment of stunned silence, Drift slid off of Rodimus's berth to stand. "I'm probably also infected, by now. I haven't noticed any symptoms yet, but..."

Rodimus shrugged. "Yeah, probably," he said. "We'd better go see Ratchet about it."

His back was turned, but Rodimus could see Drift lifting his hands to his face as he shakily vented. "I don't want Ratchet to see me like — like — I don't want him to see me. I can't go to him for something like this. He thinks I'm better than this now."

"What are you even talking about? Better than getting railed by me? _Please._ " Rodimus rolled his optics. " _I'm_ the slutty one. This isn't your fault. Ratchet isn't going to care."

"Rodimus... please."

Rodimus sighed. "He's just going to give me nanobots. You want me to get extra and bring you some too?"

"I... yeah. That would help. Thanks."

Drift let himself out of the room shortly after that, without much of a goodbye. Rodimus had no idea where he was off to, but figured he could probably use the space. He sighed, shut his panel (he had to force it closed with his fingers and even then it didn't seal, _ugh_ ) and left himself, after he'd given Drift enough time to safely get out of dodge.

Rodimus went straight down to the medibay. It didn't appear to be too busy that day, thankfully, but Ratchet wasn't there to greet him — he got a faceful of First Aid instead.

"Hey Rodimus! Can I help you?" First Aid eagerly offered. He was carrying a datapad and looked very pleased with himself.

Rodimus tried to peer around First Aid for any sign of who he _actually_ came here to see. "Is Ratchet in?" he asked. He couldn't see into any of the closed rooms...

First Aid seemed disappointed to yet again receive a patient who intended to blow him off for Ratchet. Rodimus surmised he got this a lot. "Um, yes, but he's occupied right now."

"All right, cool. Hey, you want to give me a buzz when he's out? I need to see him."

First Aid gave Rodimus's frame a cursory scan. He didn't _look_ hurt. "If it's not an emergency — really, even if it _is_ an emergency — there's no reason I can't examine you. Ambulon and I are both perfectly capable —"

"It's not that. I'm sure you're a fine doctor or whatever you are. It's, uh, personal," Rodimus said. "Really. I'll wait. Just call me. I have literally all day."

"Well, _I_ don't," First Aid huffed. "I have a lot of work to get done. If you want to see Ratchet, you're gonna have to just sit here and wait."

What the hell did Rodimus have to do to get a little respect around here? He had half a mind to put First Aid in his place, but he probably didn't want to piss off Ratchet when he was about to stick his fingers into all of Rodimus's sensitive parts. Instead, Rodimus sighed dramatically, found somewhere to sit and crossed his arms, pouting with profound petulance.

Rodimus felt like he was sitting there for an eon. It turned out that absolutely god damn _nothing_ happened in the medibay. Trailbreaker — "Trailcutter", whatever — came in for a lube job. Hoist needed his tires rotated. Pipes got a pipe stuck in his pipes. Brainstorm was convinced he'd invented a gun that shot a self-replicating antimatter plague, but he didn't. The closest thing to an exciting event that happened was the twelve seconds of time Whirl spent in the medibay attempting to cruise First Aid. First Aid was so ruthlessly efficient in removing Whirl from the room that Rodimus was forced to conclude that this was a regular occurrence. 

"Wow. _Whirl._ Having _him_ as a suitor is a rough deal, man."

"He's not so bad, really," First Aid said, rubbing the back of his head self-consciously. He busied himself with checking the readings on various machinery around the room. "Just... delusional. _Incredibly_ delusional."

"Yeah. I don't think I've ever met a mech more terminally unfraggable than Whirl." Rodimus took a moment to contemplate the matter sincerely — it wasn't like he had anything better to do. "Swerve, maybe."

First Aid laughed. "What's your issue with Swerve? Sure, he'd talk you half to death before you got anywhere, but he's not... well, _Whirl._ "

"It's just a feeling I get. You know, he's gotta be one of _those_ types — the clingy virgins who pop off on you once and run down to city hall for a _conjunx_ license. Basically, my worst nightmare."

"I see what you mean," First Aid said. "Yeah... he wouldn't be my first choice. Honestly, it seems like my safest bet is just to not get involved with _anybody_ on this ship."

"Yeah, that's a good policy."

_Finally_ , the doors to the operating room slid open and Ratchet emerged. Rodimus practically jumped to his feet at the sight of him. "Ratchet!"

Ratchet stopped in his tracks, startled, and gave Rodimus's enthusiasm a perturbed look. "Uh, hello, Rodimus. You're... here," he observed.

"Yeah. I've been waiting for a while."

"Oh," Ratchet said, cocking his head. "You should've let me know you were here. I would've seen you."

Rodimus sighed as the pieces slowly fell into place. " _For some reason,_ First Aid told me that you were busy," he said.

"Eh? Not really. I was just finishing up some OR equipment maintenance since there was nothing else to do. Slow day." Ratchet rolled one of his shoulders, popping a stiff socket. "I've been itching to see a patient."

"My mistake. Sorry," First Aid said, sounding not very sorry at all.

Rodimus slowly turned his head to look at First Aid who, of course, had pointedly tasked himself with fiddling with some machine. Rodimus wondered whether he could burn a hole through First Aid's spark if he stared at his stupid back long enough.

"... Rodimus?"

Ratchet's voice snapped Rodimus back to his senses. After jumping in an undignified manner, he stood back stock straight. "Uh, yeah. There's just something I want you to look at."

"All right," Ratchet said. He'd gone into business mode, critically scouring Rodimus's frame for any flaw. "Just take a med slab and I'll check you out. What's the issue?"

"Uh, I'd rather talk about this in — not out here."

Ratchet had been around the block a time or two. He did not need further explication to gather exactly the manner of what Rodimus had acquired. He sighed heavily, and showed Rodimus into the private examination room.

The examination room was very cramped and sterile. There was a chair and a table, and one of the walls was lined with a counter and some cabinets, but not much else. Rodimus helped himself up onto the examination table in the center of the room — he was eager to have this over with. Evidently, so was Ratchet.

"All right, what are the symptoms, where is it, where did you get it from, and _who_ did you get it from?"

"Rust. In my hole. Probably my pole, too. I got it from Hedonia. Probably. From some hookers. They were Ammonites. That's what Drift said, anyway."

"You interfaced with a _Stentarian_?" Ratchet asked, a look of disbelief gradually spreading across his face. "With _Drift_?" 

"If that's what they are, I guess? But not _with_ Drift. He was just _there_. I mean, he wasn't _watching_. He left while I went and did it." 

"Ugh." Ratchet turned his back to gather some tools from the shelves beneath the counter. "Lie back and spread."

The Lost Light's medibay wasn't exactly equipped for valvular examinations. Rodimus managed the lying down part, but when he tried to spread his legs, there wasn't really anywhere for them to... _go._ The table was too narrow to actually put his feet anywhere, and if he drew his knees all the way up, they just got in the way of his valve. His struts were very... kibbly. 

"Uh, Ratchet. Where do I put my legs?" Rodimus asked.

Ratchet glanced over his shoulder. He looked confused by Rodimus's problem. "Just let them hang off the sides if you can't pull them back."

"If I do that the edge of the table digs into my thighs and it sucks." 

Ratchet sighed. He grabbed the chair to roll over to the foot of the examination table, kicked at the column to adjust the height, and then sat down. "Then slide down here and put your feet on my shoulders." 

"Uh, all right, if you're sure," Rodimus said. He proceeded to scoot down to the edge of the table and drop his forelegs on either side of Ratchet's head. The medic immediately recoiled.

" _Not that close,_ " Ratchet barked. "And not like _that_. Here, just... brace your feet, on the face of the spaulder. Against it. Not _over_ it."

"Wow, this is a lot less stable. It's easier to just do it the other way."

Ratchet scowled, and steadied Rodimus's foot when it threatened to slide off. "Open your panel."

Well, Rodimus wasn't particularly expecting to experience a rush of excitement from Ratchet commanding him to open his panel from between his legs, but there it was. _Huh._

"... Well?"

Honestly, Rodimus was pretty sure it would've just opened on its own right then if it _could_. After trying another two times to trigger the release, he was forced to conclude, "It's... stuck." 

Rodimus braced himself for ridicule that never came. "I'm going to open it manually, then," Ratchet calmly announced instead. He allowed Rodimus sufficient time to process the warning before he procured a pair of protective gloves from his pile of tools and attempted to operate the manual release — when that didn't work, he wedged a finger into the small gap left between the panel's lip and the margins. Rodimus grit his teeth as Ratchet forced it open. _Ugh._

Judging from the effort involved in even opening the damn thing, Rodimus surmised that the rust down there must be pretty bad by now. He didn't want to think about it. If Ratchet was bothered, though, he made no indication of it — he simply picked up a small flashlight and gently parted the mesh for a closer look. Ratchet's hands were much warmer than Rodimus expected.

Ratchet only took a moment to visually scrutinize the rust before he forebodingly applied lubricant to his forefinger. "Please relax. I'm going to palpate your anterior wall." 

The way Ratchet insistently telegraphed everything he was about to do was probably supposed to make Rodimus feel more comfortable, but its effect largely just caused anxious anticipation. Rodimus sucked in a sharp intake when Ratchet finally inserted a finger, surprisingly substantial for all its dexterity. Ratchet was carefully clinical in his movements, but all the same, Rodimus couldn't help but react to the sensation of being firmly stroked along the line of sensitive points embedded in the wall of his valve. He clenched down reflexively, and felt Ratchet stiffen, but the medic simply removed his finger without comment.

"Yeah, it's your standard internal nanite infection. Luckily, there doesn't appear to be any indication of adjacent crowding or pressure," Ratchet said. "The rust is extensive locally, but I don't think the infection has spread to any of your other internal systems. You're lucky to have caught it when you did."

"You mean it could've..."

Ratchet didn't even allow Rodimus to come up with his own hysterical overreaction. "It's possible that nanites could have spread to your brain or spark eventually, yes," he said. He retrieved a metal instrument whose purpose Rodimus could not even attempt to divine. "I'm going to take a small sample. This will slightly pinch."

"Oh." Rodimus winced as Ratchet scraped the inside of his canal with the tool. It didn't _hurt,_ but it was certainly uncomfortable. "That's... that's a bad thing."

"Yes, that is a very bad thing," Ratchet mildly agreed. His stripped his gloves to put on a new pair. "Which is why it's very important that you inform anyone you've interfaced with that they need to get checked out."

That was probably a good idea, but potentially... problematic. "I'm not sure I can," Rodimus admitted. "I wouldn't even know where to begin. Honestly, I don't even know the _names_ of all the people I've banged since Hedonia. Last weekend was sort of a blur..."

"Well, figure it out, because I'm not treating a massive outbreak over your inability to keep your legs shut. Now set them down and let me look at your spike."

Rodimus grimaced, but did as he was instructed. He altered his position on the table as Ratchet readjusted his own chair, and slid his spike panel back. That one wasn't completely rusted shut, at least. 

"Can you extend at a low PSI?" Ratchet asked.

Rodimus tried. It was surprisingly difficult to manually pressurize his spike to anything but 'raging hard', but after an awkward display of fluctuating flaccidity, Rodimus managed to produce something sufficiently floppy. 

"All right. I'm going to examine it for rust," Ratchet said. He gingerly took Rodimus into his hand and turned it this way and that to peer into all the crevices and overlaps. Wow, this was worse than the valve probing — Rodimus was steadily getting harder and there wasn't really much he could do about it. But he was _basically_ getting jacked off, so he wasn't going to feel embarrassed. Like nobody _else_ would pop a stiffy in Ratchet's hands. This probably happened all the time.

Ratchet, of course, tactfully neglected to address Rodimus's now unavoidably enormous erection. When it became too inflexible for any further productive examination, he just stopped. "The rust looks like it's from the same strain of bot. The coverage isn't as advanced — I'm only seeing a bit of it between metameres. This is probably just from the comparative frequency of use. You can put it away now, I'm done."

It was hard. Well, _obviously_. But, Rodimus was also kind of aroused, and killing a hard-on from frag mode wasn't the easiest thing in the world. "Kinda can't right now. I mean — you understand. This happens all the time, right?"

Ratchet evidently decided he was not going to reply. Instead, he swiftly rose to his feet and busied himself with disposing of his gloves and replacing his instruments in their proper spots. He produced a datapad and began drafting documentation. "I'll give you a script for nanobots and an oral deoxidizer. Rinse with the wash twice a cycle and deploy a capsule of the nanobots on both your spike and valve every 24 hours. Do not ingest them. Refrain from interfacing until you've exhausted the container."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the deal." 

Rodimus couldn't stop thinking about Ratchet jacking him off. _God damn._

Eventually, despite positively prodigious attempts to do so, it became impossible for Ratchet to avoid the fact that Rodimus _still_ had an erection. "... Would you like some privacy?"

"Probably the best solution at this point," Rodimus said with a shrug, and hazarded a grin. "But hey — if you want to stick around, I won't mind _too_ much." 

Ratchet left the examination room incredibly quickly. Oh well — it was worth a shot.

Rodimus attempted to make quick work of his not-so-little problem. Thinking about Drift's aft did the trick pretty well. He was going to have his work cut out for him trying not to slam that for a whole week.

Once all was said and done, Rodimus was confronted by bad foresight. There were probably a number of things he could've done to minimize the mess, but he'd considered none of them, so he found himself suddenly covered in highly noticeable spurts of his own fluids with no easily accessible means of removing it all. He didn't want to rummage through the drawers covered in the stuff. He didn't know if his transfluid itself was infectious, but he figured it would be prudent to err on the side of caution.

"Hey, I need something to wipe off," Rodimus announced as he emerged from the examination room, holding up his fluid-streaked hands. 

First Aid and Ratchet both stopped what they were doing to turn and look at Rodimus. Rodimus figured it was probably extremely obvious to First Aid what he had just been doing. Slowly, First Aid looked from Rodimus to Ratchet, clearly expecting either an excellent explanation or an incredibly amusing confrontation — after an awkward period of silence, Ratchet decided not to skirt the issue. "He got an erection while I was examining his extensive nanite infection and I left so he could jack off," he bluntly explained.

"Oh," First Aid said. "Yeah, that happens."

Well, that was a relief, at least. Rodimus gratefully caught the packet of solvent wipes Ratchet found and tossed to him, thoroughly wiped himself down and disposed of the waste in the appropriate receptacle. By the time he was finished, Ratchet had prepared a small package for Rodimus's prescription and approached him to hand it over. 

Rodimus took the package and inspected its contents. He examined the tube of nanobots. "Hey, could I get some more of these?" Rodimus asked, shaking the small container. The inert nanobot capsules rattled inside. "I'm just saying, I've had my fair share of _infestations_ and I'm not sure this is going to be enough to do the job. I'm going to need... hmm, at _least_ twice this dose. Trust me; I'm speaking from personal experience."

"Let me guess," Ratchet sighed. "You want extra, because you've infected Drift, and he's too ashamed to come see me himself."

Oh. Uh. That... made this a lot less stupid, actually. "Uh... well, yeah," Rodimus admitted. "Yeah. He's being stupid about it. I dunno why."

"I can guess." Ratchet wore a phenomenally exasperated expression as he turned back to go back through the medicinal supplies and put together another bottle for Drift. "I'm sure Drift will know how to use these, but remind him."

"Yeah, sure," Rodimus said, adding the second tube to his container.

"And tell Drift that there's nothing wrong with him, and he's _ridiculous_ to think that I'd think less of him because he's interfacing again, but that he is a complete idiot for slumming it with _you_."

"All right, th— hey!"

Despite his protests, Rodimus found himself being summarily shown out of the medibay. Curiously, the doors appeared to have locked behind him.

With nothing else to do, Rodimus sent Drift a message to meet him at his quarters and headed back himself. It felt like he'd been in the medibay forever, so it was a relief to be free. 

Drift showed up surprisingly quickly, and looked very stern. Rodimus figured it was probably normal for Drift to be a bit cross about his crotch rust.

"Hey, I got your bots," Rodimus told him with a warm smile. "Heads up."

Rodimus tried to toss Drift the bottle of nanobots. Instead of catching it, Drift awkwardly flinched in surprise and made his grab too late. The container smacked him right in the face. "Agh!"

"Hahaha, oh wow, sorry," Rodimus laughed as Drift scrambled to retrieve the rolling bottle, clutching a hand over his optic. "You were supposed to catch it."

After a protracted effort, Drift finally caught the container and grumbled, "You throw like _Swerve._ " 

"Dude, my throw was perfect — you reacted like four hours after I tossed it."

"You threw it directly into my eye!"

"C'mon, you could've blocked that easy. You losing your touch?"

"Would you just _shut up?_ " Drift snapped. As soon as the words left his mouth, he already looked horribly contrite. "Sorry, I just — forget it. Thanks for getting these for me. I'm going to leave. I'll see you later."

Stunned, Rodimus stared at Drift's back as he quickly fled from the room. _What the hell was that about?_ Obviously, Drift was mad about the nanites, but it wasn't _that_ big of a deal. Sure, it was a mild inconvenience to have to take nanobots for a week, but it was _curable._ It wasn't anything worth having a _fit_ over.

Eh. Rodimus shrugged. Whatever — he'd get over it. Rodimus had already apologized, so there wasn't much more he could do to fix it. There was no point in worrying about it.

All he had left to do was somehow remember all of the people he'd banged in the last week. There was Skids, and... _was he really sure that had been Skids?_ He briefly contemplated cutting back on the engex, but quickly dismissed that ridiculous notion.

Well, there was _one_ way to ensure everyone got wind of the problem. With a resigned sigh, Rodimus sat down at his desk and activated the ship-wide intercom.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a week later when Drift next burst into Rodimus's quarters unannounced.

"Hey, you aren't gonna knock? I could've been doing something _indecent,_ " Rodimus said, finishing off a particularly uplifting doodle of Megatron with an _extremely_ tiny spike on his desk. He looked down at his handiwork with smug satisfaction. 

"I need to talk to you about something," Drift gravely announced. He stood a rather marked distance from Rodimus's desk, assuming a stiff and formal posture. Rodimus looked up at Drift quizzically.

"Okay, shoot."

"I've been thinking about it a lot," Drift said. His optics seemed to be directed anywhere but at Rodimus. "I've decided that I forgive you."

Well, that wasn't exactly what Rodimus was expecting Drift to say. "I — were you mad at me?"

Drift finally managed to make eye contact. His expression was blank. "Um... yes. I was. I'm not anymore. But I was."

Rodimus hopped up off of his desk and made a step towards Drift; at Drift's flinch, slight as it was, Rodimus held his hands up and backed off. "Aw, man. You could've just told me. I'd have talked to you about it."

Drift's mouth pressed into a small line. "I thought you'd figure it out after I didn't speak to you for a week. I thought... I thought that was a pretty good indication that I was mad."

Honestly, Rodimus hadn't even noticed. They hadn't been interfacing because of the rust problem, so Rodimus hadn't found anything suspect about Drift not being around. He recalled that Drift had turned him down a few times when he invited him out, but he hadn't thought anything of it. "Okay, in retrospect, I guess it was sort of obvious that you were blowing me off, but when you said you didn't want to hang out because you needed to meditate on the — the, uh —"

"The metaspiritual implications of quantum entanglement," Drift supplied.

"Yeah, that. Well, when you said you were going to do that, I assumed you were actually going to do that, because that is honestly something you would do."

Drift was quiet for a moment. "... That's true, I guess."

An awkward silence descended that Rodimus eventually realized he would have to break. "Uh, _do_ you want to talk about it?" he reluctantly asked. It seemed like the appropriate thing to offer, even if Rodimus weren't actually especially eager to have a tortured feelings sesh. 

"No," Drift said, shaking his head. "If you don't already get it, you — there's no point. It doesn't matter. I'm over it. Let's just forget about this and move on."

"All right, cool." Rodimus affixed a bright grin to his face, and when he reached out to Drift this time, he didn't recoil.

 

***

 

The fact of the matter was that Rodimus was horny as hell. At first, he didn't find that particularly unusual — he was barred from interfacing for _a whole week_ because of the nanite infection, so he was bound to be a little keyed up. That all of his fantasies featured Ratchet and his damn hands wasn't surprising, either; that was the closest thing he had to an erotic encounter prior to his miserable aft hiatus. When his restlessness continued well after he finally got to lay some pipe into Drift again, that was a bit odd.

Rodimus didn't usually go about his day desperately hungering for a lay. That he interfaced often, with a... diverse selection of people (though regrettably less than he might have otherwise, now that he was captain and had to maintain some basic pretense of authority) was simply a function of happenstance and also being incredibly handsome, charming and desirable. Rodimus wasn't about to pass up a prime opportunity, but he was hardly gagging to get hammered like he was still fresh off the forge anymore. On most days.

Eventually, he came to the conclusion that it was _Ratchet specifically._ Maybe it was just idea of being rejected that had him burning, or some weird subconscious compulsion to see that awkward encounter to a more satisfying conclusion. Either way, _obviously_ the only way to fix it was to actually bang Ratchet. It couldn't be _that_ hard.

Rodimus took advantage of his latest block of free time to head down to the medibay for a direct confrontation. Fortunately, Ratchet was out and about when Rodimus arrived — he could get right down to business without dealing with Ratchet's irritating little helpers getting in his way. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ratchet was not especially enthused to see Rodimus. "What are you doing back here?" he asked, apparently already suspicious. "Did everything clear up all right?"

"Yeah, sure, it's all gone now," Rodimus said with a wave of his hand. "Anyway, actually, I just came down here to see if you might want to get a drink after your shift's over. Your shifts _do_ end at some point, right?"

Ratchet stared at Rodimus for a long moment. Rodimus felt highly scrutinized. It was somewhat uncomfortable. When Ratchet finally replied, his tone was disbelieving. "Rodimus, are you _honestly_ attempting to pick me up a week after I treated you for an extensive infection of Stentarian pitmites?"

Rodimus recoiled. "Whoa! Thanks for shaming me in front of Doctor Leg," he said, shooting a glance to a hapless Ambulon who clearly did not want to be involved in the conversation.

"It's fine," Ambulon assured him. "Everyone already knew you started the outbreak anyway. Please don't call me 'Doctor Leg'."

Ugh. _Outbreak._ 25 people wasn't an _outbreak._ Rodimus gave Ambulon his dirtiest look. "Whatever, Hobbles."

"Rodimus," Ratchet sighed, rubbing his chevron in exasperation. "I could confidently list _at least_ five hundred different mechs I would touch before you. The list includes Waspinator, Ratbat and Bob. The list includes literally every other living being."

"Even... _Swerve_?"

Ratchet took a moment to think about it. "Actually, no. But that's _really_ not a point in your favor."

"Guys, you know I'm right here, right?" asked Swerve. He was, apparently, right there. Rodimus hadn't noticed — he hadn't bothered to actually look at who Ambulon was treating.

Evidently, Ambulon was pulling nail after nail out of the bottom of Swerve's tread. There was a bowl next to the medical slab full of like forty nails, and Ambulon was still yanking out more. What the hell?

At Rodimus's perturbed stare, Swerve supplied, "Whirl bet Brainstorm he couldn't make a grenade that exploded into guns that shoot nails, but he could, and then Whirl set it off in the bar because he was mad I was trying to close for the night, and I had to step in them to get out, and also he locked me in a closet for twelve hours to 'hide the body'."

"He was only found because Whirl realized someone was going to have to let him out if he was going to open the bar again," Ambulon sighed. 

"Wow, that's... awful, but not at all surprising," Rodimus observed. "Maybe I'll put Whirl in the brig."

Swerve gave two thumbs up. "Haven't had a charge in daaaaaaaaays."

"... Anyway, you didn't give me an answer," Rodimus said, turning back to Ratchet.

Ratchet probably could've killed a weaker man with the look he gave Rodimus. It was very fortunate that Rodimus was incredibly strong and utterly unrelenting. "Yes, I did, Rodimus," he gritted out. "The answer was no."

"What? Come on. Give me a chance."

"No."

"You haven't even tried me. You don't know if you'd like me."

"No."

"How could you resist me!? I'm charming! I'm funny! I'm gorgeous! I'm your captain! I frag like a rabid turbofox! I'm everything anyone could ever want!"

"Rodimus, leave."

"Come on, if you're going to ice me, at least tell me _why._ Give me _one good reason_ why you think clanging me wouldn't be _the best decision you've made in your entire life._ "

"Get out of my med bay, Rodimus."

"But—"

Before Rodimus could muster any further protest, Ratchet roughly grasped him by the back of the neck and hauled him towards the exit. As soon as the doors slid open, Ratchet threw Rodimus onto the ground outside. He slid across the floor until he collided loudly and painfully with the wall of the hallway. The last thing Rodimus saw before the doors to the medibay slammed shut was Ratchet staring down at him with enough derision to power several starfleets.

Rodimus took it as a _challenge_.

 

***

 

Drift seemed to recharge in Rodimus's berth more often than not these days. Drift had his own room, but Rodimus supposed the tiny standard issue recharge slabs all the hab suites were equipped with weren't nearly so comfortable as his special captain's furnishings. If Rodimus were the one banging the captain, he was sure he would be taking advantage of the privilege just as enthusiastically. 

It wasn't so bad waking up next to Drift, either. His third-in-command was certainly easy to look at — and the fact he was so amenable to interfacing the first thing in the morning was pretty convenient. With Drift around all the time, there was scarcely a moment where Rodimus didn't have an available and eager hole. 

Rodimus hadn't been to keep himself down in recharge mode for long that night. Too much trash tossing around in his head. It wasn't turning out to be the best week.

As if getting turned down weren't bad enough, thanks to Swerve's enormous mouth, the entire crew found out that he was the one who gave everyone crotch rust. _That_ made walking through the halls fun. Thunderclash showing up was just added insult to injury. Rodimus wasn't sure if he even needed to intake energon anymore. He was running entirely off the self-replenishing fuel of his impotent rage.

Ratchet proved to be much harder to crack than he'd anticipated. He'd made a few more subtle passes, but Ratchet showed no signs of relenting. It was unbelievably frustrating — _nobody_ turned Rodimus down. It just didn't make any sense. Rodimus spent a good amount of time in front of the mirror, trying to figure out what it was. Was his aft too shapely? Was Ratchet intimidated by the brighter luster of his finish? Maybe Ratchet just couldn't get it up and was too ashamed to try to satisfy someone as young and virile as Rodimus.

Rodimus decided to call it quits for now. He would come up with a game plan eventually — but even his own self-assurance in his ultimate chances of success didn't assuage the huge blow to his ego. He needed some sort of validation to take the edge off, but he was afraid that being with Drift had desensitized him to basic flattery. He was going to have to get creative to get what he needed.

He'd been awake for a while, quietly watching Drift sleep in the dim light from the cabin window. Drift was always a peaceful sleeper, perfectly still and quiet through the night — not like Rodimus, who, according to Drift, apparently tossed constantly and talked about sports.

Judging from the energy level Rodimus could feel in Drift's field, he was nearly reaching the end of his recharge cycle. It could be any minute.

After what may as well have been hours, Drift's optics flickered to life. Rodimus made sure that the first thing Drift saw was him smiling like an idiot. "Hey, you're awake."

Seeing Rodimus smile made Drift smile. They did a lot of smiling. "Hi," Drift said, making quick work of unplugging his recharge cable so he could reach for Rodimus. "I'm awake."

God damn, Drift was clingy. Not that Rodimus minded at all — it was just amusing to see how swiftly Drift would start grabbing onto him the moment nobody was around to see it. It was weird to think back on how fussy he was about it in the beginning, but Drift had clearly learned that he liked to touch, and be touched. It was nice, really.

It also made moving the proceedings to where he wanted them much simpler. With Drift pressed against the length of his body, he lifted a hand to Drift's jaw and kissed him. His plating already felt warm and hummed with charge, and he moved back against Rodimus's lips eagerly.

Rodimus took his time tracing his fingers along the plates of Drift's frame. The quality of his finish felt nice. He could feel up Drift all day, really. As Rodimus shifted his hand gradually downwards, Drift grew a little more urgent in his movements; he was sucking at Rodimus's lips needily and pushing up into every touch.

Drift's panel was already open by the time Rodimus slipped his hand between Drift's legs, and it apparently had been for some time, because he was absolutely _sopping_ down there. _Primus_. Rodimus almost wished he could horn up that fast — he'd always assume himself to be the thirsty one until Drift pulled this kind of 0 to 100 stunt. He'd been thinking about getting to do this for like an hour and he wasn't gagging for it even half that bad.

Rodimus's fingers messily slid around before he actually managed to find Drift's hole and stick it in. He grinned as Drift silently gasped against his lips and clenched and trembled around him. This was effortless — Rodimus just had to _be_ there and Drift would practically frag himself to death on his body.

Prying open Drift's reticent snatch, though, was always an ordeal. The damn thing was so tiny for his frame size, and its elasticity was bizarrely resilient — no matter how much Rodimus jammed up in there to stretch it out, it'd be back to square one the next day. It made doing anything penetrative a struggle, but it also made Rodimus feel like he had the hugest clonger in the world, so.

He worked in a second finger to enthusiastic reception. "Drift," Rodimus whispered against his lips. "Hey, Drift." No answer — Rodimus supposed his fingers _were_ rather distracting. He attempted the less direct approach of abruptly halting his movements.

_That_ got a response. Not more than a few moments after Rodimus stilled, Drift's optics came online with flicker. A small burst of static sounded from his throat as he struggled to remember how to reactivate his vocalizer. Rattled, he looked to Rodimus and half-asked, half-demanded, "What're you —"

"Hey," Rodimus interrupted with bright smile. He immediately thrust his fingers back in as deep as they would go; Rodimus reveled in the triumph of catching Drift off-guard. It earned just a little sound before Drift was able to shut down his voice again, but it emboldened Rodimus to push further. "Hey, Drift." No answer. "Drift?"

Drift hadn't seemed to realize that he was actually expected to respond. "I — yeah?" His expression was caught somewhere between confusion and a tremendous agitation.

Rodimus had gotten him listening, but now that he was actually trying it, it was more difficult to find a topic suitable for mid-interface reciprocal discussion than he expected. "How was your day?"

"My... my day," Drift blankly repeated. "I just finished recharging."

"Your last day. Tell me about your day, the other one, like yesterday, not right now." 

"I — you really want to talk about this now?" Drift glanced down pointedly between their close frames to Rodimus's diligently working hand.

"Yeah, sure," Rodimus said. He lazily drew his fingers out, dragging purposefully along Drift's internal sensors, and then forced a third in. It was an incredibly tight fit, and something he'd ordinarily have spent way longer moving up to. Drift bit his lip and drowned his cry in static — the struggle was almost as good as the real thing. "Tell me all about everything. Your day. I bet it was great."

Drift was growing markedly flustered, and if Rodimus was reading him right, thoroughly embarrassed. Was that it? Was he just embarrassed about being a screamer? _Pfft._ Drift's vocalizer crackled again as he forced it to restart. "Um, I didn't really — I didn't —"

_There we go._ One forceful press of the thumb against Drift's anterior node and he'd earned a strangled gasp, resolutely ending Drift's attempt at forming a sentence. Rodimus's smile twisted into a smug grin, though he'd been told it took some attention to detail to tell the difference between the two.

"Rodimus," Drift panted, and Rodimus could plainly see the mortification on his face the moment Drift heard what he _sounded_ like. "What — are you —"

Rodimus had to think of something to keep him going. He liked how his name sounded on Drift's lips, three fingers straining his valve. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "You been in to see Ratchet recently?"

Drift suddenly looked worried. Rodimus felt Drift tense around his digits and his spike housing suddenly felt a bit less accommodating. "Did you get another —"

"Oh! No, I wasn't trying to bring up — sorry. Nothing to do with that. My bad. Just, in general?"

It almost seemed as if Drift's confusion were beginning to eclipse his arousal. "I... no. Why?"

"No reason," Rodimus admitted. He was just thinking about Ratchet — he proceeded to blurt out, "I was just thinking about Ratchet."

"Oh," Drift plainly replied.

Okay, great. Not really much to say back to that. All right. What can get a response? "I asked him to frag me the other day."

Well, it worked. Drift's optics flashed in a surprise he swiftly attempted to hide, and whatever emotion he replaced it with was difficult for Rodimus to discern. "Oh," Drift said, again. "Well... okay. That's... that's fine."

Their faces were so close together that Rodimus barely had to move at all to kiss Drift's lips; Drift appeared to be startled both by the kiss and how quickly Rodimus ended it to resume rambling. "It was when I was getting checked out for — okay, now I really _am_ bringing that up, sorry — anyway, he spent enough time fingering me and jacking me off that I was sorta like, yeah, sure, maybe it'd be cool to get stuffed by the doc, you know?"

"I — well —"

Rodimus kept going anyway. "God, I can't stop _thinking_ about him. I'm just like... man. Yeah. I _want_ him to smash me to pieces. He totally could. He _must_ be packing with a frame like that. He told me to frag off, but I could tell — you know, obviously — he _knows_ I'm hot. He wants this. Can't say I blame him, heh heh. It's only a matter of time before I've —"

If Rodimus wanted a response, he sure got one. In the form of a shrill, head-splitting, rising-and-falling _howl_ that seemed to be coming from... Drift's crotch???

Rodimus wrenched his hand out from between Drift's legs as if he'd been scorched, but that did nothing to stop the horrible racket. He looked to Drift in bewilderment as they both jerked away from each other — Drift was substantially less confused, but easily made up for it in humiliated panic. "Is your — what the _hell_ is that noise!?" Rodimus demanded.

"Um, it's just." Drift sat up, staring down at his interface array in paralyzed horror. "It's my... valve alarm."

"Your valve alarm," Rodimus repeated back to him. It was difficult to hear his own voice over the sound. "Your valve has an alarm."

"My valve has an alarm," Drift said. "It's, um. It must be broken."

Rodimus didn't even know where to begin. "Okay, your valve — your valve has an alarm. _Why_ does your — why did it — _how do I make it stop doing that?_ "

"There's, uh, there's an override — a code — it's, okay. Just. You need to — put one finger in and turn it counterclockwise, then press down on the proximal ventral parietal sensor for... for... seven seconds." 

It took Rodimus a moment to realize he was actually supposed to _do_ that. He gaped incredulously at Drift even as he clinically re-inserted a finger into the miserable wailing hole and did as he was instructed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the screeching continued unabated.

Unintelligible strings of curses fell from Drift's mouth as he knocked Rodimus's hand away and tried doing it himself. Nothing. Drift looked as if he were about to disintegrate from shame. "Oh, Primus, it really _is_ broken. It won't shut off."

Rodimus had never had to solve the problem of a lover with a 120 decibel fraghole, so he was at a bit of a loss for a response. Rodimus stared at Drift, and Drift stared at Rodimus, and Drift's crotch kept going _woooooooooOOOOOOOOOOwooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOwoooooooooooOOOOOOOO_ and how long was it going to be until someone burst into his quarters and shot the both of them to make it stop? The entire ship must be able to hear this thing! Drift attempted to sheepishly cover his valve with his hand. It didn't help.

"You're going to have to get Ratchet to shut it off," Rodimus finally said. It was very clear as soon as he'd said it that that was just about the last thing Drift wanted to hear, though its validity was self-evident enough that he didn't bother to argue.

Drift clearly had no idea what to do. "Rodimus, I'm sorry."

"What? It's not — whatever, you just have to get down to the medibay and _quickly._ " Rodimus pulled himself up and dragged Drift with him, hauling him roughly towards the door. "And try not to let anyone see you like this at least until you're clear of my quarters."

Drift cast a pitiful backwards glance to his captain's face as Rodimus was unceremoniously shoving him out of the room. He was a bit too undone to keep the pathetic hurt from his eyes. "You want me to go _alone?_ "

Rodimus gave Drift a look torn between _good Primus I'm sorry_ and _are you stupid or what?_ It didn't particularly help matters. "Like... take two seconds to think about how _that_ would look, man," Rodimus said, clapping Drift on the shoulder apologetically. "Good luck, babe."

Rodimus shut the door in Drift's face.

He _was_ going to go down to check on Drift. Eventually. He just had to wait until it didn't look like he was the one who set off his subordinate officer's _assault siren_. Rodimus sat back down on his berth and stared at the door as the deafening noise gradually faded away; his audio sensors rang uncomfortably even after it'd passed.

Maybe he'd wait like... thirty minutes. That'd be long enough, right? If he took the long way around, it wouldn't look like he was _following_ Drift. He came from the opposite direction and just happened to be stopping by the med bay at the same time that his good friend's valvular acoustics were having a minor, spontaneous malfunction. The kind of coincidence that could happen to anybody.

He gave it fifteen and shot out of the room. There were several mechs that Rodimus passed on his circuitous path to the medical bay and he made sure to make note of none of them. He didn't want to even think about their undoubtedly judgmental stares. Rodimus was just glad Drift's alarm system sounded nothing like the ship's.

Rodimus burst into the medibay to the absolute last person he wanted to see.

_Whirl._ Whirl spun on a spindly heel to greet his captain with a phantom grin that Rodimus could feel from whichever slagpit now contained the remnants of the disgraced wrecker's unfathomably punchable head. He braced himself for the worst and received it. "HA! I just won free drinks for a month."

Rodimus _wished_ that he had no idea what Whirl was talking about. Before Rodimus could even respond, Whirl launched into an indescribable tirade of opprobrium. "So I was just walking down the hall, as is my right, and I hear this _sound_ and I think I'm going _crazy_ because, whoa! I'm just walking down the hall, what could have _possibly_ started blowing my rape whistle? Then it hits me. It's not mine! There's someone else on this ship with the _same damn valve._ What are the odds!? So of _course_ I _blast over_ here to check it out. I _knew_ it'd be Drift. With the lifestyle he had, he must've burned through a valve a week. You know, I blew up my first valve trying to stuff a couple of rockets up there, don't ever do that, by the way — so I was like, frag, I can't just walk around with a gaping molten slagsore jutting out of my undercarriage for all the world to see, but it's also not cheap to replace your interface array, yeah? Buddy of mine told me about this parts seller on Crankslist and I got a _killer_ deal on this bling-blitzed valve — and I mean FEATURES. You've got your _Harm Alarm,_ for when you're about to frag another rocket and your code says no but your spark says _yeeeeeesssssss,_ and your patented _X-Treme Auto-Repair,_ for when the rocket blows up, and modular support for flavored lubricants and a bunch of other stuff I blew out because I might've pinched another rocket or two in the past few million years, oops — lesson learned: go for bigger rockets, not more of them at once — and there's wasn't too much of a demand for the _extra extra large_ so I got all that premium slag-swag and still picked up one of those gently used bad boys on the cheap. And even besides the fact this thing pretty much meets the legal criteria for a bomb shelter, you wouldn't _believe_ what I can jam up there now — this thing is, legit, I honestly think I might have a literal _metrotitan valve_ and that's not just me bragging — you could yawn with both your fists up there and not find the sides. My sloppy gash could subspace Rung like a spare tire." 

Rodimus opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, or completely purge the contents of his tanks. Whirl did not afford him the opportunity to decide.

"Anyway, I knew that if I stuck around I'd find you chasing after Drift on his walk of shame, heh heh heh. I mean, it's not like it wasn't already _laughably obvious_ you two were plugging each other's pipes, everyone has on the ship has known for months, by the way — everybody could tell when the frigid icicle finally slid out of Drift's cranny — but there are still some idiots who I won't mention but whose names begin with "S" and end with "werve" who somehow believe it's _Ultra "Permavirgin" Magnus_ who managed to bust the rust off Deadlock's legendary untappable taps. Haha, crazy, right? But now I've got the proof I need to seal this flush deal _and_ the spicy knowledge that my illustrious captain would _totally_ love tonguing up my scummy caulk gutter."

Rodimus gaped. How was he even supposed to react to this? He looked around the room for a way out — was First Aid _hiding_ behind that machine over there?

Whirl's empty ocular peered straight through Rodimus's soul. "Do you ever think about it? What it would be like to suckle on my soggy crinkum-crankum and feel my fat squarts in your mouth?"

"I... no!? No!"

"You sure? It'll taste just like that bargain basement con gulch you love so much," he tittered. "Come on, Roddy! Whirly wants his loadies!" 

Rodimus decided that there was nothing in the world worth suffering Whirl for. His options were either to leave, kill Whirl, or break into the operating room. Rodimus sincerely considered the second, but ultimately decided on the third.

He encountered that the doors were locked — probably on account of Whirl's presence. Rodimus was the captain, though, so overriding it was a simple matter. He slipped through and swiftly re-locked the room behind him.

Ratchet was stood over Drift, examining the configuration beneath Drift's lower abdominal plate. Drift was online, observing the proceedings with trepidation; the noise had stopped, thankfully. The minimally invasive procedure that Ratchet was performing probably didn't justify use of the operating suite, but Whirl's presence and Drift's dignity were likely reason enough. When Ratchet looked up at Rodimus's entry, he appeared first surprised, and then angry. 

"Get out of here, Rodimus," Ratchet growled.

"But Whirl —"

"Get out."

Rodimus wasn't sure if he wouldn't be better off trying his chances with Whirl again. When Ratchet's scathing stare didn't abate, Rodimus turned to go.

"Wait, no. Stay."

In exasperation, Rodimus did another about-face. "What do you want from me, man?"

Ratchet seemed to just be finishing up with whatever he was doing to Drift. He snapped the plate back into place and turned towards Rodimus. "Whatever you did —" 

Before Rodimus could defend himself, Drift had butted in. "I _told_ you, it wasn't his fault. He didn't do anything to hurt me. It just went off for no reason."

"Drift," Ratchet sighed. "I _looked._ There isn't anything wrong with your array — _functionally,_ anyway. You just forgot the override."

"If it wasn't a hardware problem, it's the software. It was a false positive. I'm _fine_." 

Ratchet stared down Drift with a critical and doubtful eye, but Drift was stalwart in the face of his scrutiny. "If you're sure," Ratchet eventually conceded, with plainly apparent reluctance. 

"I'm sure," Drift insisted. He sounded irritated. "Why would I lie about this?"

Ratchet said nothing, despite the fact that there was clearly plenty he wanted to let loose. When he looked back to Rodimus, Rodimus just shrugged at him, like, _what?_

Drift clearly had no desire to remain there any further. He hopped down off the table and moved to join Rodimus. "Come on, let's go."

Rodimus got his first good look at Drift's face as he approached, and there was something a little odd about the light in his eyes. Had Drift been... _crying?_

Rodimus felt a pit in his tanks at the realization. Honestly, being around criers completely wigged him out. He never knew how he was supposed to react, especially when he wasn't in a position to provide physical comfort as an easy out. It just made him feel overwhelming embarrassment for having to witness the display of weakness, and it felt terribly unkind to think that, which only made the experience even more awkward — knowing that his reaction was jerky didn't stop him from _having_ it. It made him wish he could turn around and leave at the slightest hint it might occur. Thankfully, Rodimus never cried, so he did his part in sparing the rest of the world from ever experiencing that kind of discomfort on his behalf.

All he could hope for was that Drift was done with it. Rodimus was sorry that this experience had evidently been so traumatizing for him — it wasn't like he _blamed_ him for it — but Rodimus just felt... _weird_ about it. He looked away from Drift's face and tried to just not think about it at all.

Whirl was still in the medibay when they emerged from the room — and he'd evidently discovered that First Aid was on his shift. First Aid looked _unbelievably relieved_ when their return appeared to distract Whirl for a moment. Whirl was elated to see them — and then offended when they attempted to pass by him without a word. "What, no thanks for your big damn hero? If it weren't for me, your gyre would still be howling like Red Alert over a flickering lightbulb. What's a guy gotta do to get some appreciation?" Whirl clicked his claws together emphatically. 

"Wow, Whirl," Rodimus said. "Not cool."

"Yeah, have some respect," Drift said.

Rodimus quickly lead Drift out of the medibay, leaving a perplexed Whirl behind to puzzle out what was the matter with what he said.

As the doors slid closed behind them, Rodimus was left alone with Drift in the hallway. Drift stopped to turn and look at him, but Rodimus had difficulty meeting his gaze. "So..." Drift trailed off. "Yeah. That happened."

There was an awkward moment before Rodimus just went ahead and asked his insensitive question. "Crankslist, really?"

Drift grimaced. "... I take it Whirl told you."

"Yeah. We had... an encounter."

Drift sighed. Rodimus indicated for him to follow, and they walked together down the hall as Drift tried to explain. "Yeah, uh... when I was in the Dead End, I was doing a lot of — well, you know. After Ratchet found me, I was going to try to clean up my act, and I was planning to donate my body to a relinquishment clinic. The socially acceptable kind of prostitution, I guess. But my valve was just so... they never would've taken me like that. I needed to have it replaced. But I couldn't really _afford_ to have mine fixed or upgraded properly, so I just... yeah. Bought _this_ cheap thing. But then, uh, I didn't actually go to a clinic. And I pretty much never used it since, so there was never any reason to replace it again in any of the frame upgrades I had. I never wanted to let anyone touch me to do it. So now I just have this thing. Still."

It actually explained a lot, in retrospect — the messed up lube production, the off-color biolighting, the overactive repairs, the fact it didn't actually _fit_ Drift at all — but it was also a little... yuck? He'd been licking up somebody's _used Crankslist crack_ all this time? Rodimus didn't really know _why_ it bothered him, since he wouldn't have had a problem if Drift had been _attached_ to the thing while it was getting dinged up. He had no doubt he could've stuck in it Drift's macerated hooker gash with no worries.

Oh well, he'd get over it. From questionable origin or not, Drift's valve had served Rodimus pretty well thus far. Even the cheap parts of it were nice, all things considered. If Crankslist valve was the trade-off he had to make for basically getting the experience of fragging a virgin minibot every day, he was getting a pretty good deal.

"Well, I don't mind it," Rodimus said, because he guessed it did pretty much average out that way in the end. "I like you, and all your parts. Even your... discount box."

"Thanks," Drift said.

Eventually, Rodimus arrived at his destination: Drift's hab suite. Drift seemed to be surprised to see that they ended up there, like he hadn't actually been paying attention to where they were going at all. "Oh. This is my room," he stated. Good powers of observation, man.

"Yeah. Thought I'd walk you back."

Drift seemed hesitant to say anything. "You don't want to... finish?" he asked. Doing anything on Drift's slab would've been an uncomfortable ordeal, for sure.

"Eh... nah." Rodimus still couldn't bring himself to look at Drift's eyes again. He busied himself with inspecting his own hands. "I mean, maybe a little later. I have some reports I really need to get around to filing and Magnus will have my head if I don't get on it... you know how it is. Captain's work is never done, yeah?"

"Oh. Okay, then."

"Okay. Later."

"See you."

"Bye."


	5. Chapter 5

Rodimus spent a good amount of his time down at Swerve's bar nowadays, often with Drift. It was a good opportunity to socialize with the crew and get smashed to varying degrees of professional propriety. However, very few of his trips were ever characterized by the presence of Whirl, bubbly and eager in his face with claws full of goodwill.

"Well, if it isn't my good old captain Roddy and his plucky sidekick who is definitely well loved by the whole ship, including and especially myself!!" Whirl exclaimed. "What a surprise to see you here! Oh, look." He shoved the glass in his claw towards Rodimus, its sparkling bright pink fluids sloshing perilously up against the powdered rim. "It's _crazy_ the kind of coincidences that go down on this boat. What are the odds that I would spontaneously decide to order an _Ethylene Kiss,_ a bad drink for weak babies that I would literally never consider putting into my body, and have it on hand to graciously share with you when you arrived? Just kidding, I planned this. Take this and put it away before the sight of it saps my incredible strength."

Rodimus and Drift looked about equally perturbed by the display. Rodimus looked to Drift, then back at Whirl, and then to the proffered drink — it did indeed at least _appear_ to be what Whirl had named. Rodimus wondered whether or not it was actually some sort of bomb.

"Why are you doing this?" Rodimus suspiciously inquired. 

"I'm licking your boots to make up for the other day. Also, I still got free drinks for a month, so this involved literally no effort or investment on my part. You're welcome."

Rodimus shrugged. Why not, then? He wasn't about to turn away a bit of kissing up. He took the drink from Whirl and eagerly tried it — it was great. "Thanks, Whirl."

Whirl still had another drink in his other claw, which he next pushily insisted that Drift take. It was much less ostentatious and bright than Rodimus's drink, but it had bubbles suspended throughout the liquid. Cool. "This one's for you, Drift. I had it made special."

"I — no, I really shouldn't," Drift objected, lifting his hands in front of himself. "Thank you, though."

Now that Rodimus thought about it, he wasn't sure if he'd _ever_ seen Drift drink before. He'd convinced him to come down to Swerve's bar plenty of times, but he couldn't remember whether he actually ever imbibed anything. It was peculiar. Rodimus looked to him with a wry smile. "Come on, Drift. Have a little fun."

"No, it's okay. I don't —"

"You never let loose! I wanna get drunk with you," Rodimus said. He couldn't do much more in public, but he brushed his hand against Drift's. "Whatever you're worried about, I'm here with you. I won't let anything bad happen."

Drift very reluctantly accepted the drink from Whirl's claw. Whirl clapped in excitement and promptly bounded off. Drift looked after him with a strange and distant expression. "I'm not sure —"

Rodimus clapped Drift on the back. "Live a little! It won't kill you. You can chuck on me if you need to."

"I... okay."

 _Hell yeah._ Now the party was getting started. Rodimus looked at Drift expectantly until he took his first, very small sip of the engex, and then grinned in triumph. "How was it?"

"Tastes awful," Drift remarked, scraping his tongue with his teeth to chase away the worst of the taste. "But fine. I guess."

"Here, try some of mine," Rodimus offered.

Drift seemed initially apprehensive, but appeared to conclude that since he'd already started, there wasn't really a reason not to. He took the glass and brought it to his lips. His optics flashed in surprise. "Wow, it's so... _sweet._ I can't even taste the engex. What's in that?"

"Haha, it's like, a ton of glycol. It's my favorite. It's great for getting smashed. You can just put these away without even realizing you're drinking at all."

He handed the drink back to Rodimus. "I don't want to get carried away."

"Suit yourself," Rodimus said, and prepared himself for some obligate social engagement.

Rodimus felt great. His life was in a really good place, all things considered. He was captain of a ship, having adventures with a bunch of cool guys, and Drift was getting drunk with him. This was great. Rodimus watched Drift as he carried on an idle conversation with Rewind; seeing Drift's smile brought forth pangs of fondness. Drift stood relaxed and easy, a gentle heat in the plates of his face. His frame radiated a pleasant energy and also his thighs were enormous. Rodimus hoped to have them around his head soon.

At the first opportunity, Rodimus pulled Drift away. There wasn't much of anywhere to go in the bar where they couldn't be seen, but Rodimus managed to find a little spot by the wall far enough away from anyone who would care to listen to what he was saying.

"I'm so happy you're with me, Drift," Rodimus hummed. He made an effort to wrap his arms around Drift's waist, but Drift was very quick in putting an end to that. "I love you, baby."

Drift looked to Rodimus with brightened optics. He'd still barely touched his drink, but it seemed to have already been enough to put him in a good mood. He did look happy. Being a lightweight had its benefits.

Rodimus leaned in a little closer. "Once we're out of here I'm gonna spread your legs, and I'll lick you and suck you until you're shaking and coming in my mouth," he informed Drift. Rodimus felt Drift's core temperature shoot up several degrees. He looked absolutely mortified. "I'm gonna make you come three, four times, and then when you're wet and begging for me to fill you, I'll stretch you open and pin you down just so I can watch you writhe and try to frag yourself on my spike." 

" _Primus,_ " Drift choked out. He ineffectually pawed at Rodimus to push him away. "Rodimus, we're in _public._ "

Rodimus laughed and surreptitiously slid his hand between Drift's legs, tapping at the manual release of his panel threateningly. "Come on. You're already wet, I _know._ I could open you up right now and the _whole bar_ would flood. You're such a whore for me."

Drift stiffened perceptibly, and harshly grabbed Rodimus by the arm to remove his hand. "Okay, that's enough. Stop it. I — don't call me a whore."

"Okay," Rodimus said, backing off. "Sorry."

Drift didn't say anything in reply. They stood side by side by the wall, steeped in awkwardness. Rodimus noticed Drift's hand had a bit of a tremble; he seemed to decide the best solution to the problem was to down his entire drink in one go so it couldn't spill. 

Well, the mood was dead. Rodimus just sort of stood around as Drift looked anywhere but at him. A few minutes passed interrupted by little but the most insubstantial of exchanges. He sipped his own drink just to fill the silence. _Ugh._

"I don't feel well," Drift mumbled after a time.

Wow, what the hell did he _say_ to set off Drift this bad? Was he _that_ messed up over the whore thing? Rodimus sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean —"

"No, I... it's the drink, I think." Drift wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. There hadn't been anything on it. "I guess... I guess I had too much, and..."

He'd barely had any, but chugging a whole glass in like five seconds wouldn't have been good for anybody's systems. Rodimus put on a reluctant smile. "You're supposed to pace yourself, man. If you need to you can purge your ta—"

"Ugh." Drift lurched.

Actually, Drift _really_ did not look so hot. The color of his optics was fluctuating, and he seemed to be having difficulty keeping upright. He shouldn't be reacting like this to _one drink._ Rodimus reached out to steady him, and then looked about the room for where Whirl had gone off to.

Whirl hadn't moved far. He was at the bar, talking animatedly with Swerve — it reminded Rodimus that he was supposed to put Whirl in the brig for shooting hundreds of nails into Swerve's body. It looked like Swerve had gotten over it, though, so whatever. Water under the bridge.

Rodimus told Drift that he probably ought to sit down while he went to talk to Whirl, but Drift refused to leave his side and insistently followed along after him anyway. Whirl was looking particularly chuffed to see them, which was not a good sign.

"What did you even give Drift?" Rodimus asked. "He's getting sick."

Whirl innocently lifted a claw to his insufferable tubehead. "What? It was just an Overclocker. Weak stuff, really."

... Oh, _god. How the hell did Whirl get any of that on the ship?_ Rodimus looked to Drift. He didn't seem to react to the name, so it was probably better to not tell him, right? "Uh, Drift, why don't we go down to see Ra—"

Whirl released a bark of laughter. "HA! Hippie can't hold his Syk, huh?"

 _Well, so much for that!_ Drift reacted like Rodimus had expected: his optics flared painfully bright and he very clearly began to panic. "Oh, no. No no no no no —"

Rodimus turned to Whirl with murderous intent. "What the hell were you thinking!?"

"What?" Whirl innocently deflected. He _knew_ what he did. "There's just a little in there. It's not my fault big bad Deadlock's actually a prissy little lightweight."

It was true: there was only a little bit of Syk in an Overclocker. The Syk was supposed to "cancel out" the depressant effects of the engex, theoretically for the purpose of getting "the best of both worlds". It also contained one of several potent psychedelics.

It was stupid and dangerous and _incredibly illegal_. So Drift was drunk, on circuit boosters, and now _hysterically paranoid_ because Whirl told him he was tweaking in the middle of a hallucination. Forget the brig — Whirl was _dead._

"You knew about his history, Whirl! What the f—"

Rodimus was sincerely inches from starting a bar fight, but he was cut off by Drift roughly grabbing onto his arm. "Rodimus, we need to go. We need to go now," Drift said. He sounded terrified.

"Drift, I —"

"Come on, can't you _hear_ it? He's coming!"

"Wh — hear _what?_ Who's coming?"

Whirl was laughing his head off, and Rodimus might have _cut_ it off if not for Drift suddenly taking him by the hand and very forcefully dragging him from the bar. 

Rodimus attempted the futile effort of asking Drift what was wrong, what he thought was happening, or where they were going, but Drift paid him no mind. "We have to go," he just repeated. "I have to _get out_ before — before —"

Drift broke out into a run, and it was a struggle to keep up — unsurprisingly, Drift moved very quickly when he thought he was about to be killed. It occurred to Rodimus only as they were finally approaching the doors of the captain's quarters that Drift appeared to believe that _Rodimus_ was now the thing that was chasing him.

Rodimus had no idea what the smart thing to do was when Drift tried shutting the doors to keep him out, but he reflexively ended up jamming his fingers painfully in the doors to pry them open. Drift retreated further into the room when Rodimus made it inside. He didn't even hesitate to go straight for the Great Sword. Rodimus boggled. _Who the hell does Drift think I am?_

"Don't — don't come any closer," Drift warned. "I'm on _Syk._ You won't — you won't be able to take me. Because I'm so powerful." He licked his lips compulsively. " _I'm incredibly strong._ "

It was probably a safe bet to keep his distance anyway. Rodimus stayed where he was, held his hands up, and tried speaking gently. "Drift, you're not just on Syk. You're hallucinating. Whatever you think is going to hurt you — it's not real."

"You're lying. That's what Decepticons _do_. They're _liars._ "

"Drift, I'm not a Decepticon," Rodimus said, for all the good that would do. "It's me. I'm Rodimus."

"You're lying," Drift repeated, but the grip on his sword was a little less sure. "Why else would _the music_ be here?"

"You don't want to be on Syk, right? We need to get down to the medibay so we can flush the Syk out."

That evidently wasn't the right thing to say. The blade went right back up. "No. No no no no no. No!" Drift shouted, growing even more erratic. "I won't. I'm not going to Ratchet on Syk. I'm not. I won't do it. He can't know. If you make me I'll fight you. I won't do it."

"Okay. Okay. I'm not going to make you do anything, Drift. Please believe me."

Well, there had to be some reason that Drift used to be so into this stuff in the first place, right? Sure, he was screwed up over it now, but that was because deep down inside he was still fiending for it. Addicts never stopped being addicts. If Rodimus couldn't convince him to go see Ratchet, he'd have to figure out some other way to deal with Drift's paranoia — and maybe this didn't have to be a _bad_ trip.

"Drift, let's put down the sword, okay?" Rodimus said, inching forward very slowly with his hands defensively raised. "You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm not gonna hurt you. It's Rodimus. I'm _your best friend._ "

Drift slowly lowered his weapon. "My best friend," he repeated.

"Yeah. Me, Rodimus."

"And that's all that you are," Drift said.

"And that's all," Rodimus said. "I'm not anybody but Rodimus. I'd never do anything to hurt you."

Drift let his sword clatter to the ground and Rodimus seized the opening. He pulled Drift into his arms and, shakily, Drift hugged him back.

"They're going to hurt _you,_ " Drift concluded, voice muffled against Rodimus's shoulder. "That's what they'll do to hurt me. They'll hurt you and they'll make me watch. They won't do anything to me — they'll keep you alive and they'll torture you, and they'll tell me it'll stop if I'm the one who kills you but I won't because I'm a coward. He's coming and _I'm a coward._ "

Wow, that was... an oddly specific and detailed nightmare scenario that Rodimus didn't really want to think about, but he was starting to figure out what was going on in Drift's head. With the realization, he gently pushed back, set one arm around Drift's waist, took his hand with his other, and thanked Primus there was no one around to see this.

"What are you doing?" Drift nervously asked, scrambling to keep up with Rodimus's steps as he began to move around the room.

"Dancing," Rodimus answered, as if it were the most plainly obvious thing in the world. "That's what people do when there's music."

Drift looked _incredulous._ "But I don't dance to the music — nobody _dances to the music._ " His voice dropped to a panicked whisper. "It's _Tarn!_ "

"Tell me about the music," Rodimus firmly instructed. "Am I doing it wrong? What should we be doing? Like, some kind of funky electro-jig?"

"Wh — _no._ It's _Tarn!_ It's... it's classical."

"Oh. Would I know it?"

"Um... it's an organ piece, one of _Eucryphia's_ — the Empyrean Suite — you know, the one that goes..."

Drift tried to hum the melody, but between the fact he was high, scared and not a particularly accomplished musician, nothing really came out that Rodimus could've _recognized._ Nevertheless, he let Drift set the pace with that terrified, wavering tune, and he did his best to perform some mockery of a waltz without smashing Drift's feet into scrap. Drift couldn't sing, and Rodimus sure as hell couldn't dance, but the absurdity of it all _had_ to reduce the plausibility that Tarn were _actually_ coming to kill them.

"Here. Do the twirl — I'll twirl you," Rodimus suggested.

" _What?_ "

"You know — the twirl. The kind of twirl that's in the sort of dance I'm trying to do. Come on, even _I_ know this much about dancing. I know about _the twirl._ "

"I never did any dancing that didn't involve a _pole,_ " Drift bitterly remarked. That was good — he must have regained some concept of time. " _You_ do the twirl."

"Okay, then, like, hold onto my hand like this —"

"Okay —"

"No, don't _crush_ my hand, I need to be able to turn around —"

"But you told me —"

"Argh, my _arm_ is going to snap off if you keep doing that! Like, don't even really grip it — like, you just take my hand, like this, and you move your arm over _here,_ and then I gotta turn, and you just let me turn around with your fingers like, _under_ mine, or whatever."

"This is so complicated!"

"I swear to god, I'm going to twirl if it _kills_ me. Okay, one more time —"

It was a miracle, but Rodimus managed to do a twirl. It only hurt a little when Drift caught him around the waist and clanged their bodies together.

But Drift was laughing, and when Rodimus pulled back, he could even see that Drift was smiling. He didn't need to ask; Tarn was gone. Drift took his hands and sighed, just a little loopily, "Rodimus."

"Drift," Rodimus replied. "You're Drift, and I'm Rodimus, and we're here on the Lost Light. Nobody's coming to get either of us, except maybe Ultra Magnus."

Drift brought Rodimus's hand to his lips to kiss his fingers. "You're Rodimus."

"Um... yep."

Abruptly, Drift let Rodimus go and started to wander around the room. Rodimus wasn't sure what he was doing, but he didn't seem to be freaking about about anything, so it was probably fine. Rodimus went to take a seat on his berth and watched Drift with a careful eye.

Every object in Rodimus's quarters seemed to stand as a source of great interest to Drift. He was picking through all of Rodimus's things; he'd take one into his hands and bring it up right in front of his face, staring at it intently, and then put it back where he found it. He spent a long amount of time just _doing_ this in silence. All of the drawings on Rodimus's desk seemed to incite the most fascination — when Drift reached them on his circuit, he stopped to analyze them as one might a museum art piece.

"Why is Megatron's spike so small?" Drift eventually asked. His tone made it sound like he were asking a question a lot more important than that.

Rodimus shrugged. "'Cuz it's funny to think that the guy who started the four million year war was just doing it because he was aftdamaged about his tiny hose."

Drift did not appear to be in the mental state to process humor. "That wasn't why."

This was getting to be dangerous territory. Rodimus did not want to spend any more time talking about Megatron. Or any Decepticon, for that matter. In an effort to deflect, he said, "Hey, Drift. Come lie down with me."

Thankfully, Drift let the topic drop there and eagerly came to join Rodimus on the berth. Rodimus let himself lie back, and Drift mirrored his motions to settle in beside him. In the comfortable silence, Rodimus laced his fingers with Drift's. They felt cold and clammy, but calm. Rodimus shifted his head to look quietly to Drift — he was staring intently up at the ceiling, seemingly enthralled. Rodimus looked back; there was nothing there but the blinding expanse of pink ceiling tiles. He wondered, "What do you see?" 

Drift couldn't wretch his gaze away from the ceiling. He gently squeezed Rodimus's hand. "I see everything," he said, awestruck. "I can see every planet, every star, all the way back to the beginning of time."

Well, okay. Rodimus could play along. He pointed to some random spot above them. "What's that one?"

"That's CA 173A1," Drift answered with confidence. "It went supernova two million years ago. And that one won't form for another twenty. This is incredible..."

"Yeah," Rodimus agreeably confirmed. "It's amazing."

Drift gave a little laugh and suddenly lurched up to roll himself on top of Rodimus, a hand on either side of his head. "And you're Rodimus Prime," Drift said. His optics were blazing almost as brightly as his smile. "You're the brightest star."

"Haha, oh wow." Rodimus was stunned. It took him a moment to form real words. "I'm surprised I'm not dead from how lame that was. Definitely true, though."

Drift's attempt to kiss Rodimus was sloppy at best. He missed the lips entirely, and ended up just sort of smushing his mouth against Rodimus's face. Rodimus sighed, and helpfully raised a hand to guide him to the right spot; he could feel Drift smile against his mouth when their lips touched. The proceedings became a little more heated when Drift needily vented out his name against him — not to even mention the confusing effects of Drift's clumsy hand fumbling all over Rodimus's crotch.

"Drift," Rodimus gently interrupted. In an unprecedented act of selflessness, he pushed Drift up and off of his face. "This isn't a great idea to do right now, probably."

Drift looked down at Rodimus with hurt and confusion. "Why?" _Dammit._

"Uh... because you're kind of high and I only managed to get you to stop freaking out about it a few minutes ago. I don't wanna take this to... you know, another bad place. I don't wanna dig up whatever that might dig up for you."

Honestly, he just didn't want to risk setting off Drift's _Harm Alarm_ again.

Drift didn't appear to have the mental faculties required to process a nuanced refusal, though. He just looked upset. "I need this," he pleaded. "You're all I can ever think about."

Well, Rodimus couldn't frag Drift, but maybe there there was something else he could do. "... What is it you do? When you think about me?" Rodimus asked.

"I — I —"

"Show me."

"Um, I... what..."

Okay, maybe that wasn't direct enough. "Touch yourself for me," Rodimus clarified.

Drift hesitated, but pulled back until he was kneeling astride Rodimus's hips. His body was lifted, reluctant for their frames to touch. Rodimus's gaze wandered down to the sight of Drift's panel, closed, but tantalizingly exposed — Drift wasn't quite touching Rodimus, but his array was positioned dangerously close above him, and Rodimus could feel the feverish heat radiating from Drift's core as easily as if they were pressed together.

Rodimus's cooling fans kicked in as he passively watched Drift's trembling hand slide down between his own legs. His fingers groped blindly over the plane of his undercarriage, and the lights of his active array shone through the seams. 

Rodimus knew what was coming, but the sensation was still a bit of a shock. As soon as Drift's interface panel slid away, the accumulation of lubricant that had pooled behind it splattered wetly across the frame beneath him. Rodimus did his best not to jump, or squirm at the feeling of cool air rushing over the warm fluid.

It was as if a burden had been visibly lifted from Drift's shoulders. He released a small sigh as he pressed the breadth of his palm against the already soaked plane of his array. Rodimus watched with rapt attention as Drift's fingers slid up along his slit, and then back down to circle the dripping rim of his valve. He slipped a finger inside, and Rodimus's optics flicked up to catch the sight of Drift's face, flush, his lower lip bitten between his teeth. Rodimus was not prepared for the unrestrained sound of Drift moaning his name. 

Oh, wow. This was going to be a challenge after all.

Drift had evidently forgotten all about whatever issue it was that was holding back his voice, and given that he was not going at this slow or easy, he was certainly making up for the lost time. He rocked into his own hand as he pressed inside of himself, stroking along the sensitive pleasure points embedded in his walls. He drew his finger out to rub along the top of his valve and when he plunged back inside he'd added a second digit to the stretch.

Rodimus was intimately familiar with how small Drift's array was. Two fingers in Drift's may as well be four in his own — he could see the strain in the rim of Drift's valve as his fingers pushed in and spread out. Even as wet as he was, the exertion was plain to see. Rodimus chewed his lip as he recalled the struggle of filling it to the margins with his spike.

Even if Drift's valve _was_ from the bargain bin, it was honestly pretty nice. It was clean and prim, and nothing really poked out until he spread it apart. The color of the biolighting was just slightly off from the rest of Drift's frame, but his node was small enough that it wasn't too noticeable. Rodimus could cover the whole exterior easily with his mouth. It was the sort of pretty, fragile thing Rodimus delighted in pushing to its breaking point.

Drift brought down his other hand to rub the top of his valve as he erratically fragged himself on his fingers. Drift was gasping, and his motions were frantic, and it was painful for Rodimus to even _watch,_ not least because he was dying to see how Drift would react to some _real_ stimulation. He knew that just the circling of a finger couldn't compare to the feeling of his tongue right against the mesh. He wanted to lick and suck Drift until he screamed — and it really wouldn't have taken Rodimus much to pull Drift up over his face and into his mouth, or pin him to the berth and impale him to his core. The amount of self-control Rodimus was executing in the face of this display was _unimaginable._ It was _heroic._ He was kind of let down that there was no one else there to see it.

Rodimus was surprised to see Drift release his spike. He never really used it much when they were together; sometimes Rodimus wanted to put it in his mouth and Drift let him, but other than that, he kept it locked up. Rodimus thought it was a little weird. It was _painful_ to keep himself shut when he was really going, but Drift had no trouble getting off without so much as airing the thing out. Was there a hardware difference, or was Drift just messed up and torturing himself on purpose? Rodimus had never had a reason to ask anyone else about it. Whatever his issue was, Drift certainly seemed to be enjoying it now. He stroked himself out of time with the fingers in his valve, unable to maintain any sort of rhythm. 

Ugh. Trying to withstand this was impossible. Rodimus wasn't sure if holding off was worth it. Here Drift was, masturbating on him, masturbating _to_ him, and he seemed to be doing all right — but Rodimus really couldn't anticipate how Drift would respond to the loss of control. He didn't want to be responsible for the trainwreck that would be incurred by _that_ going south.

Rodimus sighed. He would settle for fragging Drift half to death _the nanosecond the drug passed from his system._

Thankfully, Drift at least seemed to be nearing a climax. Rodimus averted his eyes. He already had a lubricant problem, and his spike panel was insistently requesting to be opened — he needn't make it any worse by watching any more. Drift's _voice,_ though, was impossible to escape, and no less arresting was the wet heat emanating from the valve poised only so many inches from his own array. Rodimus didn't often pray, but he was going to need some divine intervention to survive this.

Drift's legs gave way as he came, leaving Rodimus and his crotch break the fall. It was alarming, to say the least. Rodimus grit his teeth as Drift shamelessly ground his spasming array against his spike panel. It took every ounce of willpower that Rodimus possessed to keep himself shut. Drift's spike wasn't nearly so overproductive as his valve, but he still managed to splatter warm transfluid across Rodimus's chest. Rodimus balled his hands into fists and shut his optics down and tried as hard as he could to block it out, for all the good it'd do. 

And then finally, finally, it was over. Drift tipped over and collapsed beside Rodimus in a heap — and Rodimus wouldn't have described his own composure to be much better off. He released his spike the moment Drift had pushed off of him, just to relieve the unbearable pressure building against his panel. He didn't want to just jack himself off — he fully intended to thrash Drift, and soon — so he did his best to put the ordeal from his mind. It was a bit easier without Drift writhing on top of him. Gradually, with enough effort, he was able to bring himself down.

Rodimus tried to sit up when he'd calmed, but was greeted by the uncomfortable sensation of copious fluids running down his abdominal plates. Drift was so _messy_. "Ah. Do you feel better?"

Drift didn't answer. Rodimus shifted to check if he was okay; he looked fine, but a bit tired. He probably didn't have it in him to be responding to questions right then. Rodimus let himself lie back down next to Drift, watching him quietly. It took a while for Drift to regain his bearings and turn to look blearily at Rodimus.

"Hey," Rodimus said.

Drift didn't waste any time getting down to some feverish babbling. "You confuse me so much," he mumbled. "Sometimes you say things to me that make me think that you _must_ because who would _say_ that, who would _do_ that, but then you always say something else and I don't know what to think. I'm afraid to ask you."

"I — ask me what? What are you talking about?"

"You're so kind to me. You say all of the right things. It's so much nicer if I can just let myself think this is real."

"This _is_ real," Rodimus gently said. He reached out to touch the side of Drift's face. "I'm really here, see? I'm not going anywhere."

Drift brought up his own hand to cover Rodimus's. "You're real. But what I see isn't. What I hear isn't. What I feel isn't. Those things aren't what you are. You're something else, far away and different, and you act like a lie because you don't even know what it _means_ to be real. You don't understand my truth. You see everyone else and you know that we're lies, too, because you are, and you don't know the shape of anything else — everywhere you look is a mirror and the light of what's behind it can never reach you from the darkness."

Rodimus's mouth opened and closed as he attempted to make _any_ sense of what Drift just said. In the end, all he could do was laugh and say, "Dude, you are _so_ high right now."

Something passed through Drift's eyes that Rodimus couldn't parse in the darkness. "I can't let go," he mumbled. He grasped at Rodimus's fingers a little too tightly for comfort. "I want to let go but I can't let go. Why?"

Rodimus carefully withdrew his hand. Sure enough, Drift was reluctant to release the grip on his fingers — but in the end, Rodimus pulled free.

"I think..." Drift brought his fingers to Rodimus's face and slowly traced down the contours of his lips and chin. It made him nervous, but he didn't resist. "I think..." The hand trailed down over his collar and his chest. Drift stopped just where the spark lay, and stared intently down at it, as if he could see through all the plating and cables to the pulsing core. "I think I'm coming down." 

Tension that Rodimus hadn't even noticed was there dissipated from his frame. "Just like that? It's over?"

"Ugh." Drift pulled himself up to sit. "That was... Tryp, I'm pretty sure. Felt like it."

"Oh. I never tried that. Does it really go off that quick?"

"Yeah, it hits you fast and hard and then it drops you. It's awful, but at least it doesn't last long. It's so easy to have a trip go bad. I always needed someone there to keep me in check when I was doing it, even _back then._ If you hadn't been here, I don't know how it would've gone. I don't wanna think about it. At least there wasn't that much of it in the drink."

"I'm glad it's over."

"Man. I still feel really buzzed on the Syk, though," Drift said. He got up off the berth to move around. He looked restless. "Boosters and engex — that was something not even I was dumb enough to try. Well, maybe more like I was too dumb to think of it. This feels so weird. My body's drunk but my mind is totally clear."

Obviously Drift must have had a low tolerance, but was he really noticeably impaired through the Syk from just one drink? Rodimus was barely even buzzed anymore. He lifted himself up with his elbows so he could watch Drift. "Is it bad?"

Drift seemed hesitant to answer. "I... no. It's not bad." He was sort of wringing his hands absently. 

Rodimus got the feeling that he was making an understatement of it. "Now that you're not hallucinating: are you still going to kill me if I suggest going to Ratchet to flush it out?"

"I'm not going to kill you, no. But I'm still not going to go."

"Drift..."

Drift stopped pacing and turned to look down at Rodimus, optics hardened. "I shouldn't need to explain this to you, okay? I'm a drug addict but I got clean and it's because of him. He saw the best in me when no one else would. It doesn't matter if he wouldn't judge me for this. I need to believe that he will. I know there's Syk on the ship and I don't take it because of him. If Ratchet won't judge me then why don't I just use again?"

Rodimus was surprised by Drift's forcefulness. It wasn't often that Drift's disagreements came without grovelling prequalification. "There are more reasons not to take addictive drugs than _Ratchet,_ " Rodimus said.

"Are there? I'd be happier. It doesn't make me happy to be clean. I _know_ what it's like to be happy. It makes it hard to deal with even basic things. I know that when I'm angry or upset or lonely, I don't have to be. I know that whatever happiness I do feel will never compare to how I feel when I'm using. But the world decided that it made me useless. So I can't let myself care about being happy. I can only care about what I am to other people. I can only be useful. Ratchet, Megatron, Wing, you — I need someone to let down."

Wow, that was... bleak? Rodimus didn't know what to say. It wasn't like he'd never partaken in the occasional mind-altering substance himself, but he couldn't really wrap his head around that level of dependence. Rodimus liked being drunk, but it didn't ruin his _baseline._ Being drunk was something that contributed to his happiness even when he _wasn't_ drunk — it was a fun thing he could do to have a certain kind of experience, and he got to enjoy the memory of that experience when it was over. He didn't spend his sober hours desperately longing for the sensation of drunkenness. There were times when he definitely didn't want to be drunk, and it wasn't a struggle not to be. It didn't rule his life. "I'm sorry," Rodimus eventually managed. "Is Syk really the only thing that makes you happy?"

Drift took a quiet moment before he spoke. "No. You make me happy, sometimes." He sighed. "Sometimes I think you might be _worse_ than the Syk."

"Yeah?" Rodimus asked. He looked up at Drift from where he lay, grinning. "Are you _addicted_ to me?"

Apparently concluding that it just wasn't worth the effort required to be irritated at Rodimus and his smug insensitivity, Drift rubbed at his temples in defeat. "I may as well be."

Well, this was as good a time as any to go for the gold. Rodimus turned himself over to crawl towards Drift and beckon him closer — his shamelessness earned him a hard look, but in the end, Drift relented and allowed himself to be pulled down onto the berth.

"This is okay, right?" Rodimus didn't stop to wait for a response before he rolled on top of Drift, forcing himself between his thighs. "I mean, you're not going to have problems interfacing on Syk?"

Drift shook his head. "Oh, no. Doing it on Syk is great, actually."

"Okay, cool." Rodimus leaned in to very politely shove his tongue into Drift's mouth. As the lights in Drift's optics went out, it suddenly occurred to Rodimus to ask something else. "Hey, hold on — okay, awkward time to ask, probably — why do you turn your voice off while we're doing it?"

Drift brought his visuals back online, looking disgruntled by the interruption and very much like he wanted to escape. Unfortunately, that was impractical while he was pinned beneath Rodimus with his legs spread apart. "Oh. That's — it's stupid."

"Come on, just tell me."

"It's just... it's a habit." Drift's optics wandered down between his legs, where Rodimus and his closed array were pressed against his own very open panel, and then snapped back up. "Shutting everything down. It made doing what I had to do easier. If I couldn't hear or see, I could just let myself feel it, and pretend it was anyone else I wanted. And my voice, it's just — I don't want to sound like... a whore."

Drift was right. That _was_ stupid. "Oh my god, Drift," Rodimus laughed. "You really think I wouldn't _love_ that? Come on." He made a point of rolling his hips against Drift's exposed array — Drift's whole frame tensed and he sucked in a sharp intake of air.

"I don't love it," Drift choked out, a hand dug into Rodimus's hip. "It's _put on_. It's what they wanted and I don't know how to do it any other way now. I don't know how to act normal."

"What is _normal_ supposed to be? I don't care even a little. I think it's great. Like — I think it's hot you've done the stuff that you've done. No lie."

Drift seemed skeptical. He'd probably spent so long getting worked up over nothing that he didn't even know how to react to someone being _into_ it. He looked at Rodimus irritably, but said nothing. 

Rodimus smiled, and kept pushing. He took a certain measure of joy in being annoying. "So who do you pretend that I am?"

"Um." Drift took a moment to think about it, and seemed to reach a particularly embarrassing realization. "I pretend that you're... you."

Rodimus laughed. "You don't need to pretend, babe. I'm actually here."

There wasn't really much for Drift to say to justify his neuroses. Eventually, he just settled on screwing up his face in exaggerated exasperation and gave Rodimus a gentle push to the chest. "Are you going to frag me or are you we just going to sit here talking about our feelings with your junk up against my trap?"

"I want to hear you," Rodimus said, leaning back in to press his lips to Drift's mouth just briefly. It got the effect he wanted all the same. "And I want you to hear me, and see me, and feel me. I want all of you."

"Rodimus," Drift sighed.

Rodimus stared into Drift's eyes, and Drift stared back. The intensity in his optics was unsettling. Abruptly, Rodimus rolled off of Drift to sit himself up against the head of his berth. Drift appeared immediately dismayed by his departure. "C'mere. Come sit in my lap," Rodimus said, patting a thigh mockingly.

Rodimus laughed as Drift flipped himself over and scrambled to do as instructed, pulling himself astride Rodimus's hips. Rodimus kept his array closed, but slid a hand around to Drift's lower back and pressed him closer — Drift canted his hips, and it was easy for Rodimus to slip a finger inside from behind. Drift tensed at the sudden intrusion, but he was clearly eager for the long-awaited penetration. Rodimus wanted to make quick work of the preparation — thankfully, Drift had already done a lot of the job for him earlier. It didn't take long to work him up to a second, and then third, finger. Drift decided to kind of pull Rodimus's head into a crushing grip against his shoulder, which, all right. He could understand the urgency. Rodimus was certainly very tired of waiting to get his spike wet.

It seemed like a pretty good time to finally pop the panel. Drift pulled back in surprise as he heard, and then felt, Rodimus rapidly pressurizing — his expression looked fricking nuts, like somebody just threw a sausage to an earth dog. Rodimus couldn't help but laugh.

"Shut up," Drift courteously instructed Rodimus, and began artlessly fumbling with his pike.

It appeared that Drift was indeed impaired by the engex, even through the Syk. Rodimus decided that it was in his best interest to take pity and help out — with a hand gently braced on Drift's hip and the other around his own spike, he helped guide Drift into position. Drift's legs were trembling and he was staring so intently down between them, as if this were the first time he was ever seeing himself get fragged, which, Rodimus supposed, it may as well've been.

Rodimus pressed himself against Drift's entrance and let him take back control. Drift was apprehensive as he allowed the head to breach his valve — Rodimus just steadied Drift with a hand and tried his best to be patient. This always took time. The intense heat of Drift's array certainly made it difficult; it hadn't been that long since his last overload, and Rodimus could feel the residual charge in his walls. His fingers dug into Drift's hip as he slowly, slowly sank down, inch by inch, segment by segment, until he couldn't move any further. 

The position didn't allow Rodimus to penetrate very far. Drift rocked on his lap, and the movement was shallow, but the sensation of Drift's painfully tight rim clamping down over the jump between his metameres sent an intense and disarming jolt through his frame. Rodimus gripped Drift more tightly; he could feel the tremble in Drift's body as easily as he could hear the desperation in his quiet convulsive ventilations. Even with his vocalizer on, Drift was obviously still self-conscious about modulating his output.

Rivulets of lubricant ran down the exposed portion of Rodimus's spike, and it demanded a tremendous amount of willpower to not simply hold Drift down and _make_ it fit. Drift clumsily pressed his lips to Rodimus as he moved, not so much kissing him as gasping fervidly against his mouth. "You're so big," Drift panted, pawing needily at Rodimus's neck and chest. 

Rodimus just laughed. "I'm really not, but thanks," he said. Was that part of his automatic porno soundtrack, or just his messed up Crankslist pit?

In an effort to avail himself of a greater range of motion, Drift managed to tear himself away from Rodimus's mouth and shifted back to support his weight with an arm out behind him. Drift had much better control to roll himself in a building rhythm — and Rodimus could look down the arched length of Drift's body like this, legs spread across his thighs, half his length buried in Drift's valve.

Rodimus's cooling fans went up a speed. To say that Drift was easy to look at was an egregious understatement. Drift straight up had one of the nicest frames Rodimus has ever seen, let alone _touched_ — Rodimus could've been entertained for hours just watching him stand around doing nothing. Getting to see his own jack up that literally never got old. Getting to slide his hands down the taper of Drift's slim waist and splay them over the shifting plates of his abdomen and feel the smooth curving metal of his thighs while he struggled to take the girth of a spike was an incredible bonus.

" _Rodimus_ —"

When Drift flagged, Rodimus decided that he had had more than enough of restraint. In a fluid movement, he shifted forward to push Drift down against the berth and pin his body with his own. Rodimus bit at Drift's lips as he harshly rolled his hips; whether Drift was ready for it or not, he buried himself to the hilt. He could press so much deeper like this, and it was such a _relief_ to hit the rim, and he couldn't tell if that _sound_ was his or Drift's or both. He lifted himself to support his upper body with his arms and watched Drift's face with rapt fascination as he drove his spike to the peak of his canal — Drift's optics flashed and his lips gasped and words tumbled from his mouth that Rodimus understood no further than the desperate urgency of his tone.

Drift clawed at the plates of Rodimus's chest as he thrust once, and then twice, slow and deliberate and hard. Drift was staring down between their bodies, to where their hips joined, his lips parted, enthralled by the sight of the head just spreading his valve — and when Rodimus impaled him again he keened and his crown tipped back and his optics rolled into the back of his head. 

Rodimus _loved_ this. Drift was a toy to him. He knew exactly what to do to get exactly the reaction he wanted. The abrupt, jerky thrusts made Drift yelp, but if he took his time, drew back slowly so he could feel Drift catch on every segment of his spike, and left him gaping empty, desperate, tantalizingly pressed to the rim, and then filled him again in a solid, deep stroke, he could pull something out of Drift that was positively _illegal._

The sight was as good as the sensation. Rodimus held onto Drift's hips as he pulled back; he wanted to see the whole of Drift's body writhe before him, _for_ him. As he watched himself move into Drift, he pressed his thumb against the stretched folds around his spike. He could feel the pulsing energy, the slick strain of the rim and the swell of his own spike encroaching upon the margins — any thicker and he would've been scraping the edge of the array's inflexible metal. It made his engines run hot and his mind wander — he could imagine how Drift must have felt, stretched to his absolute capacity; he know how good it was to just be _overwhelmed_ and filled so completely that nothing else even registered but the sensation of his body being dragged inside out. He could imagine himself there, lain where Drift was lain, his own legs splayed across the thighs of some massive faceless bot with an even bigger prick and no concern for his personal safety. He wanted to get fragged like this so badly it _hurt._ He was _jealous._

He ran his tongue over his lip. It was growing difficult for Rodimus to control the pace of his movements — he wouldn't be able to stop himself from making a hard jerk of a thrust, and Drift would jolt, and clamp down hard, and that just made it even worse. Drift was reaching his limit now, Rodimus could tell — he pressed his thumb right against Drift's anterior node to finish the job. Rodimus gave it to him in a steady rhythm, hard and deep, brushing his thumb quickly and forcefully against the top of his valve; he could feel Drift ripple around him and rock up into his strokes, feverishly urgent and burning hot.

"Rodimus, I'm going to —"

"Come for me, Drift, baby," Rodimus said. 

Rodimus faltered as the heavy contractions of Drift's valve seized at his spike; Drift was babbling senselessly, his hands clawing at Rodimus's arms and chest and neck and face, and he pulled Rodimus down for a kiss that stunned him in its desperation. Rodimus held Drift still as he shuddered and rocked and came, still hard inside of him. 

When Drift's heaving calmed and the overload passed, Rodimus pulled out and rolled off onto his back. He was _close,_ still hard and restless and pulsing from the charge, but his spark was clawing for something else.

"Did you finish?" Drift asked. He was clearly weak from his overload, but eager and helpful as ever. He reached over to stroke Rodimus before he could even answer — he had to grab Drift's hand and slide it to where wanted it. 

"Frag me," Rodimus commanded, very unambiguously forcing Drift's fingers against his wet and exposed valve.

Even in the face of very clear direction, Drift wavered. "If you want to wait a minute, I can —"

"No, no, I can't wait, just — just put your fingers inside me."

Drift acquiesced. He inserted a finger, and then two, to very little resistance, and was gentle as he stroked the walls around him. It was the very opposite of what Rodimus wanted.

" _More,_ " Rodimus demanded. "Do it harder. I'm not kidding, like, just punch the damn thing."

"Um, okay," Drift said — but even when he put force behind his arm, he was clearly still overly concerned with whether or not what he was doing would hurt Rodimus.

It wasn't enough. No matter how hard Drift seemed to try he couldn't do it _hard enough._ Rodimus couldn't help but whine. He reached his own hand down and with an awkward grip, he took Drift's — their fingers entwined clumsily and he stretched himself wider, until it _hurt,_ and he was afraid that with any more he would burst. Drift just watched, hapless and helpless, as Rodimus set his own brutal pace with Drift's limp hand as a toy. But even as he spread himself apart and pummeled himself so hard that his whole framed jolted with the force, their mess of fingers couldn't fill him the right way, and it couldn't be _deep_ enough — it's not like he could take a _whole fist_. Even as he rapidly approached overload he was frustrated, unsatisfied and unrelentingly lustful for that sensation of _complete consumption_ that he knew he wouldn't get from Drift. 

All the same, his frame had a physical limit and he reached it. The overload hit him hard, if not hard enough, and he arched as the lining of his valve clenched around their fingers. The urgency faded, but left him empty. Drift withdrew his poor abused hand as the spasms slowed and Rodimus crashed from the wave.

For how utterly unsatiating that was, Rodimus's valve sure hurt a damn lot. He could feel the pain the moment he pulled his hand away. _Ugh._ He could tell he wasn't seriously injured, but the ache was a lot less welcome than it was when it came from a proper frag with an old-fashioned massive pipe. 

"Are you okay?" Drift tentatively asked. He had the expression of someone who had clearly just completely failed. Rodimus felt bad just looking at him. It wasn't like it was his _fault._

"Yeah, I'm fine."

While Drift may have lacked in demolition skills, he was certainly proficient in lavishing Rodimus with affection. He pulled Rodimus into his arms and kissed his lips, his nose, his cheek — when Rodimus looked into Drift's optics, they were shining and bare.

"Oh yeah," Rodimus recalled. "I have to go and kill Whirl."

Drift pressed his forehead to Rodimus's chest with an exhausted sigh. "Please don't."

Rodimus pulled away and sat up. "What? Why?" he asked, peering down at Drift critically.

"I don't want him to know that he was able to hurt me," Drift said. He let himself roll onto his back to look up at Rodimus.

"Drift, he _deliberately_ gave _drugs_ to a _drug addict_ because _he thought it would be funny._ That's illegal. That's a crime. Like, I don't know what law that is specifically but he is 100% breaking it. There are _several crimes going on here_. If not death, he's getting the brig, _forever._ "

"And then he'll be sitting in there supremely smug about knowing he got to me. I don't want to give him the satisfaction."

"When is Whirl ever not smug about something?"

Drift ignored him and went for a different tactic. "And I don't want the crew to think I can just... use you to put whoever I don't like _away._ It's hard to make anyone trust and respect an _ex-Decepticon_ — if people start to see me as a _crony_ I could lose everything I've worked for."

"You are being unimaginably stupid about this," Rodimus said. He couldn't make any sense of Drift at all. "First of all, literally everyone would completely understand because what he did to you was _awful._ Secondly, _nobody even likes Whirl to begin with._ Third, you already have the authority to arrest people yourself, you're my damn third-in-command. Fourth, everybody already thinks you're my pet, who cares? You _are._ "

Drift frowned, and sat up. "We need Whirl," he said.

"What? How?" Rodimus threw up his hands in exasperation. " _Nobody has ever needed Whirl!_ "

"I, well..." It took Drift a while to relocate his train of thought. Was he just making this up on the spot? "Use him to figure out how the Syk got on the ship and who's been distributing it. It didn't come from him. He bought it from someone. He'll tell you if you threaten him and offer him immunity."

Ugh. Rodimus wasn't going to do anything to Whirl if Drift was going to be a big god damn whiner about it, but that didn't make the entire premise of this conversation not incomprehensible. "You're dumb and impossible, just so we're clear," Rodimus said. "I'm going to recharge."

Drift looked down at himself self-consciously. "Oh. Well. I'm kind of on Syk, so I can't charge."

Rodimus shrugged and set about wiping himself down, at least well enough to jack in a charge cable without starting an electrical fire on his wick. "Go practice your sword over there or something while I sleep."

"Uh, okay," Drift said. He got out of the way so Rodimus could properly enjoy his habit of taking up as much of the berth as possible.

In absence of anything else to do, Drift did indeed appear to begin practicing his sword over there. Maybe that wasn't actually the best idea. Oh well. All Rodimus cared about was settling down and conking the hell out. _Good night._


	6. Chapter 6

Rodimus was just a mess.

He could not believe there was not a single god damn mech on the entire ship who was willing and hung enough to wreck him properly. It was an unprecedented state of affairs. Rodimus had never wanted a frag and _not been able to get it!_

Being captain had its downsides. Now that he couldn't scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel, or stoop to _utter_ shamelessness, his options were severely limited. There weren't many people he could bang at _all,_ let alone ones who were sufficiently equipped and adequately competent. Skids was honestly pretty good, but he wasn't _big,_ and he also wouldn't touch Rodimus unless he was practically black out drunk and that wasn't great for the ego. Cyclonus could probably pull it off, but like hell was Rodimus even going to go _near_ that. Trailbreaker — " _cutter_ ", whatever — might've been hung, but he was such a forgettable milquetoast that it wasn't worth the time required to contemplate. He considered inviting Fort Max up out of the brig and asking him a few questions about Overlord — but the chance of _dying_ was possibly more than he was willing to risk. Maybe he could convince Spoke and Lockstock to go for double penetration... 

"You've been acting strange lately," Drift quietly observed. He was sat astride Rodimus's thighs, deftly pressing his fingers between the stiff plates of Rodimus's back. 

Rodimus let out a tired sigh; he was stressed, but Drift always did a good job of working the kinks out. "I'm just so _frustrated,_ " he complained. "I can't find anyone to frag me."

Drift's hands froze. "I... see." When he resumed, he pressed his thumbs beneath the blades of Rodimus's shoulder plates with surprising force. Rodimus drew a sharp intake.

"Yeah," Rodimus said. "I honestly don't know if Ratchet is ever going to _go_ for it anymore — I've been _trying_ but he still hasn't cracked, and I'm so desperate to get plowed right now that I don't have it in me to play the long game at all."

Drift was definitely going at it pretty hard now. Rodimus yelped when Drift practically punched his lower back — it felt good, but he wasn't expecting it. "If you want, I could do it," Drift said.

"No, no, it's okay," Rodimus said, waving a hand. "Don't worry about it."

"I'm not _worrying_ about it. I want to help you. It's not like I've never done it before."

"What I'm asking for is a little more than your simple hump and pump, Drift," Rodimus said. "You aren't really prepared for this."

Apparently, that was the end of the massage. Drift slid off of his back, so Rodimus moved himself up to sit up and stretch. He did feel a lot better.

"I'm willing to _try,_ " Drift insisted. Rodimus turned to look at him — he certainly seemed determined. "Rodimus, I've _murdered several million people._ I'm capable of being rough with you if that's what you want."

Rodimus sighed. He really wanted to just avoid the issue entirely, but Drift wasn't letting it go. He had no choice but to just be forthright. "Babe, you just aren't big enough for me."

Well, Rodimus hadn't expected Drift to take it well. It was like looking at a turbofox get kicked in the face. "Oh," Drift said.

"Don't take it the wrong way, yeah?" Rodimus said. He reached out to gently brush the side of Drift's face, in hopes that it was a comforting gesture. "I still love interfacing with you. But there's some stuff you can't do for me."

"I can... I could upgrade my array," Drift offered.

Rodimus withdrew his hand with a doubtful expression. "Okay, so you're telling me that you're going to go to Ratchet and tell him that you need him to build you a bigger spike so you can frag me the way I like." 

Drift balked.

"Yeah, I didn't think so," Rodimus snorted. Honestly, he didn't think he'd really want to get pounded by Drift, even if he _were_ packing an enormous hammer. Drift just didn't have the temperament for it. Rodimus wanted to get chewed up and spat out when he was taking it, not dotingly worshiped — and no matter how many sparks he'd snuffed out in the past, Drift had clearly lost his touch. "Look, it's cool. You don't have to be _everything_ to me. I like the things that we do now a lot. It's just that sometimes I need other things that you can't give me, and it's fine, because I can just get it from somebody else. It doesn't make what we have any lesser. You know what I mean?"

"But, I —"

"I mean — if you _want_ to spike me, I wouldn't mind at all. I'll do it and I'll _like_ it — I like making you feel good. It's just not what I _need_ right now."

Drift's expression was muddled. 

" _Do_ you want to spike me?" Rodimus asked. "It's not a big deal, Drift. I'd do that for you."

Drift hesitated before he replied. "I don't want to do it if you don't want to do it."

"That's not what I'm _asking_ you," Rodimus sighed. He enunciated himself slowly. "Drift, do _you,_ independent of my wishes, want to put your spike in my valve?"

"I... not... not particularly? It's not something I need. If you wanted me to, I would, but —"

Rodimus slapped a hand to his forehead and let it drag down his face.

Perhaps thankfully, their conversation was interrupted by a terse rap at the door. Drift immediately assumed a state of panic. He scrambled off of the berth and hurried to stand himself over by Rodimus's desk; he pulled a datapad off of it and made a show of being absorbed by its contents. Rodimus just rolled his eyes and lazily got up to open the door.

Well, he certainly hadn't been expecting Ratchet to show up at his quarters unannounced. "Ratchet! Finally changed your mind, old man?" he asked, grinning insufferably.

Somehow, Drift managed to ascend to a plane of discomfort more dire than the one he had already been occupying. He focused even more intently on the datapad clutched in his hands.

"Shut up, Rodimus," Ratchet growled, and invited himself inside. 

"Ah, yes. Welcome, Ratchet, make yourself at home." Rodimus moved back around his desk and took a seat. He made a grandiose gesture towards all of his wonderful amenities.

Ratchet ignored Rodimus's sass. "I'm here to make a request for a stop."

That was unusual. What business could _Ratchet_ possibly have off the ship? "Yeah, where?" Rodimus asked.

"We're passing the Tellectus system, and it lines up with a conference I want to attend," Ratchet said. He spoke quickly and with barely concealed derision, clearly intending to get through the conversation as soon as possible. "I'm interested in getting a medical imaging system that was developed by a scientist there. I think it'll help with neurological diagnoses."

"What, you want to run the medibay off alien tech?"

"It's not alien. The doctor is Cybertronian."

"And he's just been living offworld by himself?"

"I guess so. He's a xenoneuroscientist and teaches at a research university on Tellectus 1. Probably wanted to escape the war — a lot of the academics deserted."

Rodimus couldn't help but be suspicious. Yeah, deserters happened — but what was a bot doing on _Tellectus_ , of all places? It wasn't exactly known for its friendliness to mechanicals, nor an accessible source of Energon. Hell, a _neuroscientist_ should've been smart enough to find a way to catch up with any of the _other_ shiploads of deserters out there, no matter when he checked out of the war — and why didn't he come back to Cybertron when it was all over? It was weird. Was Ratchet hiding something? "Did you know him before the war?"

Ratchet shook his head. "No. At least, not by the name he's going by now — it's been a long time."

"Then how did you even hear about him?"

"Well... Brainstorm has a subscription to the, um, the 'Galactic Intertubes' — I'm sure you know, he never stops forwarding those chain mails — and he let me try it out for a little bit," Ratchet shrugged. "I did some local area searching and found a few interesting things."

"Like a Cybertronian scientist you've somehow never heard of, living in the middle of nowhere on an organic planet?"

"I had a short conversation with him over the — _the tubes_. He seemed perfectly legitimate. It's not that strange."

"I dunno, man. Something about this just feels off," Rodimus said, lifting his hands in a shrug. "Captain's intuition."

Ratchet frowned irritably. "Are you really going to stonewall me on this because I won't —"

He seemed to think better of ending the sentence, given the way his optics sharply snapped to Drift once he remembered the poor mech. Rodimus followed his gaze, and Drift looked up at them in confusion. "What?"

"I didn't say we couldn't stop," Rodimus said, turning back to Ratchet. "I just have one condition: I have to go with you."

 _That_ didn't make Ratchet any happier. "He invited _me_ to the conference, not the entire crew. Tellectus won't respond well to too many of us trying to land."

"When did I say anything about _the entire crew?_ It'll be just _me and you,_ Ratchet." Rodimus didn't bother to suppress his insufferable grin. "But if you'd really rather _not go at all_ than suffer my company, well..."

Ratchet looked like he was about to either throw up or toss Rodimus out an airlock. Nonetheless, Ratchet sighed, wiped a palm down his face, and reluctantly accepted defeat.

 

***

 

It turned out that customs was hell no matter where you went.

Rodimus and Ratchet had been in low orbit waiting for authorization to land for the past hour. From all the ships showing up on the shuttle's radar, it seemed Tellectus 1's borders were a bit backed up — given that there were also Tellectuses 2 through 17, a high volume of local travel was probably to be expected. If they weren't clearly informed that any attempt to bypass processing would result in being blown up by satellite lasers, Rodimus would've seriously considered trying his luck with gunning it.

What made it truly unbearable was Ratchet's complete refusal to so much as _talk_ to Rodimus. He attempted to strike up some idle chatter — nothing _lewd,_ or anything — and Ratchet would resolutely shut him down with an dismissive "mhmm" or a "yeah". They'd been sitting in _dead silence_ for at _least_ the last half hour. Rodimus was about to _explode._

Thankfully, after exactly 65 minutes had elapsed, the shuttle beeped with the alert of incoming communications. Elated, Rodimus rushed to engage the video connection — and was immediately repulsed by the sight of the fleshling before him.

"Passport," droned the corpulent meat monster in an unflattering hat. 

Rodimus looked to Ratchet, and Ratchet looked to Rodimus. "Uh —"

" _Passport,_ " the alien repeated, louder and more slowly, as if it assumed they'd simply not understood the word.

"What do you need us to show you, exactly?" Ratchet reluctantly asked. 

"To dock within the Tellectus system, you need either a Tellectus Residential Fastpass or an active passport valid for interplanetary travel within the Galactic Council territories. Please present your identification."

... Oh, yeah. Tellectus was a Council system. _Great._

"Um, we don't... _have_ passports," Rodimus admitted. "Is there any chance you'll let us through anyway? Uh, ha ha, I know Shanix isn't trading too well right now, but..."

Ratchet gave Rodimus a sharp look. The alien's sentiment appeared similar. "Without documentation considered sufficient by the laws established by the Galactic Council, you will be required to immediately abort your attempts to land. Upon cessation of our correspondence, you will be allowed one kilosecond to depart from orbit before we will engage planetary defense protocols. Goodbye, and thank you for visiting the Tellectus system."

With that, the feed cut out. "Well, that was a valuable use of time and fuel," Rodimus said.

Ratchet rubbed the back of his head. "I had no idea the Tellectus system was travel restricted — I assumed because a bot was living there that it wouldn't be a problem. A Cybertronian wouldn't be able to _hold_ a Council passport."

Just as Rodimus was about to return to the controls and have the shuttle turned around, they received another request for a communications contact. It was from Tellectus control, again. Confused, Rodimus accepted the call. 

"You've been given clearance to land," the customs alien curtly informed them.

That was unexpected. "I — what? How? Why?"

It ignored all of Rodimus's questions. "You must now dock at a pre-designated location for a mandatory safety inspection of your spacecraft. You have been sent the coordinates to the inspection station closest to your stated destination, where you are authorized to dock at bay K958. Please begin your descent so the next ship in line can be processed."

 _Interesting._ Now Rodimus was _definitely_ curious. He input the provided coordinates and prepared to enter the atmosphere.

Miraculously, Rodimus managed to land the shuttle at the inspection station; given the laborious orbital security, Rodimus was apprehensive about what they would be subjected to during the inspection, but there was no issue. The two of them were quickly allowed to pass the security checkpoint, though they drew many surprised looks from the aliens crowding the enormous terminal. There were so _many_ different species moving about — Rodimus wasn't especially good at telling fleshlings apart, but the physical differences on display were enormous and numerous enough to leave him overwhelmed by the prospect of cataloging them all. There was no obvious dominant species, either; he had no idea which of these aliens were native to this planet, or if any of them were. It was an unwieldy sprawl of diversity.

"Where to?" Rodimus asked.

"I guess we ought to check in at the hotel the conference is at," Ratchet said. "I'm sure there will be maps for sale here. Hopefully we can drive..."

Just as Ratchet finished speaking, though, he got a call on his commlink. He answered and had a very brief exchange. "Oh. Outside? All right."

When he hung up, Rodimus looked at him quizzically. "Who was that?"

"We have... a _ride_ waiting for us outside the station."

Sure enough, they found exactly that waiting for them on the curb. "It's the black van," Ratchet said.

A van may have seemed overkill for a taxi to pick up two bots, but once they'd climbed inside, the reason for the choice became clear. The vehicle was just a bit undersized, and they barely fit into the proportionately spacious back seats. They would've been crushing themselves in a smaller modeltype.

There was no driver that Rodimus could see — seemed to be piloted by an AI. It greeted them in a soothing voice, "Good afternoon, **Ratchet,** and, **Unidentified Cybertronian Passenger.** Today, the weather is: sunny, with a 0% chance of precipitation. Our destination today is: The Galactic University of the Paramount Sciences. Traffic forecast: Mild to moderate delays on the T485 Terrestrial Motor Lowway due to a police action. Our estimated time to arrival is: 2 kiloseconds."

Well, hopefully this autopilot wouldn't get them killed.

Rodimus was just about bursting with questions, at this point. "Who _is_ this guy?" he asked, though obviously Ratchet didn't know, and the car wasn't likely to have any answers. "Not only is he living by himself on an organic planet — _a travel restricted organic planet on Council territory that Cybertronians are banned from_ — he's overriding the goddamn planetary security protocols and sending us _self-driving alien vans_. What is going on?"

"Beats me," Ratchet said.

Knowing that Ratchet wasn't likely to submit to any of his attempts at making conversation, Rodimus resigned himself to simply enjoying the scenery. And scenery there was: Tellectus City wasn't quite the overwhelming metropolis of Iacon, but it displayed its wealth with contrived purpose. Despite the massive designer skyscrapers that lined their path, the streets of the inner city felt spacious and and clean. The skies above were crossed by skyways full of orderly lines of vehicles, moving uninhibited by traffic. Innumerable fleshlings of every species and race imaginable swarmed the sidewalks, but not one of them displayed a hint of poverty. Everything about it rang incredibly false — and as the vehicle took turn after turn, doubling back in nonsensical directions, Rodimus couldn't help but get the feeling that this route was chosen for a purpose other than efficiency.

Soon enough, the guided tour took them out of the most populous areas of the city. They seemed to be ascending up a hill, towards a tremendous complex of buildings that Rodimus assumed must be their destination. It was surrounded by more residential districts — the entire planning of the city seemed to be situated around the University.

The van pulled up at the main building of the campus after 33 minutes had passed, and very clearly indicated for them to get out by swinging open its doors. Rodimus was very glad to be out of the creepy van — occupying lifeless vehicles from other planets was always a strange experience. "So do we just go in?" Rodimus asked.

"I guess," Ratchet said, and headed in through the automated doors of the large central building.

The lobby of the University was enormous — it was bigger than the central airport terminal! Rodimus couldn't immediately see the reason why, either. There was an information desk close to the entrance, a seating area around a campus map, and each wall was connected to walkways to different buildings of the campus, but it otherwise seemed totally empty. The only thing taking up the floorspace was its massive decorative tiles and a few fleshlings dressed in important looking clothes moving between buildings. He was startled out of his scrutiny of the lobby by a voice from seemingly nowhere. "You are here to see Professor Distrail," it stated.

Rodimus looked all around for the source of the voice, but he only found it when he finally thought to look _down._

The sight of the little mechanical creature stood at their feet was unsettling. It was very short in stature, bipedal, with a single head — quite like a human in scale and structure, actually — but lacked any fleshy accoutrement. It appeared to be pared down to a ghoulish wireframe of thin limbs and a messy jumble of exposed pistons and wires; it was like looking at a bot stripped of all his plating. Most disturbing of all, though, was definitely its expressionless skull of a face, and the way it stared up at them with intense, uncovered optics.

Rodimus sucked in a sharp surprised vent, but Ratchet made an attempt to respond with civility. "Yes, he said he'd meet us."

"OK. Follow me. I will show you to the laboratory," it said. There was something just slightly off with the way it spoke — its voice was pitched too high, and its diction was too _unnatural,_ like its vocalizer weren't quite attuned to the sounds it was trying to produce. It had no tongue and its mouth didn't move, so it was clearly generating sound digitally, probably from a shallow library of phonemes. Rodimus couldn't tell if it was _alive_ — he'd have assumed it were a basic drone if not for the discomforting sense of _presence_ behind the very Cybertronian design of its eyes.

The pair of them followed behind the little robot in silence. It was moving as fast as its legs could carry it — it looked a bit comical — but they still had to walk slowly to let it keep ahead. Whenever they encountered stairs, it had to engage in an awkward display of hauling itself up each step one at a time; Ratchet offered to carry it, but it resolutely refused to be helped. It lead them through an absolute labyrinth: through the walkways of two buildings, up a flight of stairs, across the floor, _down_ the stairs, through another connecting bridge, then up, up, up an elevator that opened up to a long hallway. The robot took them down the length of _that_ , and at the door at the end, input the security code (there was a secondary panel near the ground, apparently just for it to reach) and let them inside.

Behind the door was a fairly small entryway, with a desk and a sitting area. The sparse furniture was distinctly Cybertronian. The walls on the left and right sides of the room were glass, and each lead into large laboratories. One of them appeared to be preceded by a decontamination chamber. 

The creepy robot informed them that "The Professor" would be in to see them soon, and then proceeded to motionlessly _stand there_ in the middle of the room. Rodimus considered taking a seat, but he was so freaked out by this thing that he didn't want to make any sudden movements.

Its small eyes flitted jerkily up and down their frames. Unshielded as they were, Rodimus could see every little rotation to its lenses as it focused on what it was looking at. After a long period of scrutiny, the little mech definitively said, "You are Autobots." It clearly wasn't a question.

"Yeah. And what are you?" Rodimus asked.

It answered quickly, as if by rote. "My designation is デジタル友達Ｆ２００, or _Dejitomo,_ for short. I was an experimental prototyped manufactured in Minato-shi, Tokyo-to, Japan, Earth, Sol, Milky Way. My original parameters have been substantially augmented by Professor Distrail of the Galactic University of the Paramount Sciences, and as such I now serve my own autonomous purposes."

 _Ugh._ Creepy. Rodimus _hated_ it.

"You're from Earth?" Ratchet asked.

"Yes."

"That's... interesting."

The robot shook its head. "It is not. There is no reason for you to be interested in Earth."

"Primus deliver me from this evil," Rodimus muttered.

Unfortunately, Ratchet seemed curious enough to keep it talking. "Are you an artificial intelligence?"

"Yes," it answered. "However, I pass the Turing test with a 99.6% rate of success. My central processor is now indistinguishable in intelligence from an average Cybertronian brain. The functional difference is negligible." It paused. "This is what Professor Distrail has determined."

Rodimus didn't know what a Turing test was, but he certainly wasn't buying that this thing was as complex as _him._ If it had any ability to do anything but drone on like an emotionless husk, it wasn't exercising it.

Just when Rodimus has about concluded he'd had enough of the freakshow, the doors to the laboratory entryway slid open and the man of the hour stepped through. Rodimus immediately hated him, too.

 _Professor Distrail of the Galactic University of the Paramount Sciences_ was a pile of pompous superiority in a tin can. He held himself with the kind of subtle arrogance typical of pretty much any jet Rodimus had ever met — he could tell from his pinched, smarmy smile that this was one of those guys who would never let an opportunity to show how much smarter he was than you pass. He might've been handsome, if his finish had had any gloss to it at all; his paint job was a curiously matte, dark grey — almost black, but not quite — and unusually well maintained, for a bot living on a planet with not a single other Cybertronian around. It made him look almost sterile.

Rodimus didn't like him, and he sure as hell didn't _trust_ him, either. 

All of Rodimus's first impressions were immediately confirmed when Distrail opened his mouth. "Good afternoon. Ratchet, I'm glad you were able to join us for the conference after all," the professor said, beaming with false affability. He reached out to shake Ratchet's hand. When he turned his smile onto Rodimus, he notably made no offer to shake to _him._ "And you are?"

"Rodimus," Rodimus said, crossing his arms. "Matrix-bearer — _kinda_ — and captain of the Lost Light, leading the best and brightest of our race on a search for the Knights of Cybertron. You know... no big deal."

"Hmm, quite." His red optics next landed on the creepy robot. "Ah. I see you've already met Tomo. I trust she hasn't given you any trouble?" 

"She kept us entertained," Ratchet said.

 _Entertained_ was one way to put it. Rodimus couldn't contain his morbid curiosity. "What _is_ that thing? Is it _alive_?"

The professor almost seemed offended by Rodimus's derisive tone, but kept a measured composure when he spoke. "She's not technically _alive,_ per se. She doesn't have a spark. However, she's become something of a pet project — I've devoted a tremendous amount of resources to developing her processing framework, and I believe it has paid great dividends. She has received Sentience Equivalency Certification from an accredited Ambus proctor and has been emancipated by the Tellectus Supreme Court — a landmark case in the legal personhood of manufactured mechanicals, actually," Distrail bloviated. His smile returned as he gazed at his little ego fluffer. "She is in her freshman year of undergraduate classes here at the University; she wants to practice law. Is that right, Tomo?"

"Yes," the robot curtly confirmed, a stark contrast to its creators garrulity.

Rodimus still had his doubts. "But if it's really that advanced, why does it _talk_ like that?"

"She doesn't _have_ to speak this way," Distrail said. From the curious look on his face, it seemed to be a topic he often wondered himself. "She simply... wants to. She sees value in her origins and her identity. This was a choice she made for herself, when I gave her the capability to make it."

"... Huh," Ratchet said, watching the robot carefully. "She's based on a human frame, isn't she? I notice she doesn't have... skin."

"Yes, well, I don't exactly have access to artificial human skin and hair here on Tellectus, and the verisimilitude of her original coverings left much to be desired besides. I think she looks better without flesh, anyway. I've offered to fashion her some more Cybertronian plating, but she hasn't been interested," Distrail said.

"That's just great and really interesting," Rodimus deadpanned. He was eager to move the conversation away from the topic of the disturbing robot. "Anyway, I was wondering — we nearly got kicked out at the border, but at the last minute they changed their mind and let us in. What the hell was that? Was that you?"

"Yes. I'd been keeping my eye on border communications. I suspected they would give you some trouble."

"Aren't you a _professor_? How are you jacked into _border control?_ "

Distrail produced a tight-lipped smile. "Tellectus 1 is a critical arm of the Council Curricula — the Galactic University of the Paramount Sciences presides over this system in all but name. If you seek power in Tellectus, look not to its governing body, but the President of Progressive Science. All aspects of Tellectian life revolve around the University and pursuit of academic knowledge. You are not permitted to live within 25 kilometers of the capitol unless you are enrolled in the University, possess a doctoral degree from a galactically accredited institution, or are the dependent spouse, offspring or ward of one who does. So, my employment by this exclusive institution — my membership amongst the 'Intelligenti', as those outside the capitol might say — affords me certain privileges that one would perhaps think unusual for a mere professor of higher education to possess."

Rodimus laughed. "Dear Primus, have you ever listened to yourself talk?"

Distrail seemed taken aback. "I — excuse me?"

" _Rodimus,_ " Ratchet grit out. 

"You took literally, like, an entire novella's worth of words to say 'I know some guys'," Rodimus said. "Have you ever met Perceptor?"

Distrail frowned. "I — you _asked._ I was merely answering your question."

"Well —"

Ratchet gave Rodimus a stern look. "Rodimus, _shut up._ " 

_Ugh._ This was Thunderclash all over again. Why was Rodimus the only one who could tell when these blowhards' exhaust stank?

"At any rate, I have no doubt you didn't make such a long journey to hear me speak," Distrail said, trying to dodge the tense conversation. "Let's cut right to the chase. Ratchet, you are interested in the neural imaging system we have developed here, yes?"

Ratchet nodded. "That's right."

"Right, of course," Distrail said. He moved to the door of the left-hand lab and set about inputting his tortuously long code. "If you will allow me just a moment, I'll prepare the lab and give you a demonstration."

With that, they were left alone with the creepy robot again. The lab appeared to be soundproof, given that Distrail was stomping about and moving things and Rodimus couldn't hear a peep. He edged over to mutter to Ratchet in a hushed voice. "So, if he was on Earth, and we don't know him, there's only one thing that could mean."

"Rodimus," Ratchet warned. He was looking carefully at the robot, who was staring quite openly back at him with its piercing blue eyes. 

Rodimus wasn't that concerned about the robot hearing him. "I mean, maybe it's possible we managed to completely fail to recognize an Autobot scientist after a paint job and a name change, but it's more likely he's a fricking Decepticon. _Come on._ "

"The thought had occurred to me," Ratchet dryly said. "But the war's over, and even if it weren't, he's obviously abandoned their cause. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Yeah, because giving Decepticons the benefit of the doubt has worked out so well in the past."

Ratchet leered at Rodimus critically. "You certainly seem to be enjoying the benefit of _Drift._ "

Rodimus was taken aback. "Wh— Drift is different."

"Is he?"

"Yeah. He's — Drift has proven himself," Rodimus said. "Man, what the hell, Ratchet? You know Drift is like... basically a saint now."

"So what does this guy have to do to prove he's worth your time? Suck your spike?"

Rodimus could tell that Ratchet was trying to rattle him — but the medic should've known what he was getting himself into. Rodimus affixed him with a lascivious grin and said, "Nah, man. I'd much rather be the one doing the sucking. I love getting choked by big pipes."

Ratchet's snarky look immediately fell off his stupid face.

"You know, I was forged without expulsion protocols," Rodimus said, steadily inching towards an increasingly flustered Ratchet. "You could shove your whole spike down my throat and I wouldn't ev—" 

Before Rodimus had a chance to deliver the _coup de grâce_ to Ratchet's dignity, Distrail returned to enthusiastically invite them into the prepared lab. "Everything's ready," he announced, either oblivious to or unwilling to address Ratchet's horrified expression and Rodimus's uncomfortable violation of his personal space.

Ratchet was incredibly relieved for the excuse to bodily shove Rodimus out of the way and hurry towards the held open door to the lab. Rodimus stumbled, laughing, but caught his balance and followed soon after. Distrail shut the door once the little robot wordlessly joined them on the other side.

The laboratory was filled with rows of a large assortment of machinery and monitoring equipment — Rodimus couldn't have been begun to divine what much or any of it was for, besides that it did all appear to be of Cybertronian make. The professor showed the two of them over to a machine on the far side of the lab that loomed over a large chair bolted to the floor; it looked more like a torture device than a medical imaging machine. A thought which did not make Distrail's immediate suggestion particularly palatable.

"It's actually quite fortunate you chose to bring a friend along, Ratchet. I can demonstrate to you how the MNIS works."

"Whoa, whoa. I didn't sign up to get gamma rays blown into my head," Rodimus said, raising his hands.

"The MNIS does not use _gamma rays,_ " Distrail said, defensive. Rodimus could tell this guy didn't like him. _Pfft._ "It merely monitors the electrical activity in the brain in response to controlled stimulus and produces four dimensional graphical imaging."

"Well, _excuse me, professor._ I don't want any kind of wave going into my brain, all right?"

"Rodimus," Ratchet sighed. "Please just cooperate. You're not going to die."

Rodimus rolled his optics histrionically and crossed his arms. Distrail went about setting up the machine, and prattled while he worked, "Software analysis is a simple matter, but the MNIS allows for non-invasive imaging of the mechanical hardware of the brain. It will allow you to make diagnoses with greater accuracy than you might with a direct visual examination, and will provide you deep access to regions that would otherwise require dismantling of the brain. As I'm sure you know, neurosurgery is an incredibly delicate procedure, especially for someone who isn't specialized in that area."

Ratchet nodded mildly. Rodimus didn't like where this was going one bit.

Soon enough, the machine had come to life and the array of monitors beside it displayed an unintelligible deluge of information. Distrail gestured towards the chair hospitably. "If you'll just have a seat here, I can perform a brief scan."

Reluctantly, Rodimus did as instructed — he didn't really _want_ to go along with it, but maybe if he was helpful it might get him some points with Ratchet? It was worth a shot. He said nothing as Distrail attached a number of wires to his fingers and some especially disconcerting ports in his head. He braced himself as the professor reached up to bring down some sort of awful metal hat attached to an arm on the back of the seat. As it descended over his eyes, Rodimus was plunged into a claustrophobic darkness — _really_ not pleasant.

"All set," Distrail announced. Rodimus couldn't see him, or what he was doing. "Now, I'm going to load a small software program into your system. It will emulate various kinds of external stimuli, and the machine will record how your brain responds. This should only take a few minutes. Please stay as still as possible as not to disrupt the imaging process."

Rodimus tightly gripped the arms of the chair as he waited for Distrail to flip the switch — when he did, it wasn't as bad as he expected. All that happened was that a range of innocuous images filled his otherwise blind optical feed — it covered a wide selection of seemingly unrelated topics, from flat planes of single color to pictures of faces in various expressions. Sometimes he would hear sounds like running water or an engine. After a while of it, he was more bored than anything.

A disembodied voice eventually started asking him basic questions, like what his name was, where he was from, how he felt when he saw certain images — nothing that really stood out. It didn't take long before the program cut off and the machine lifted up off his head. "All done," Distrail announced. 

Rodimus hopped down out of the chair as Ratchet and Distrail stood peering critically at the images on the monitor. This was probably as close to excited as he'd ever seen Ratchet; they were talking quietly in a rapidfire exchange of jargon that went completely over Rodimus's head. The only thing Rodimus could parse were the rotating images of his own brain, its sections blooming with colors that meant nothing to him besides looking kind of nice. 

After standing around awkwardly, Rodimus ventured, "So, how's my brain?"

Distrail looked over his shoulder. "The results of your scan were... interesting," he said, putting it delicately.

"Interesting how? What, am I like, special? Super intelligence? Turbo bravery? Hyper charm?"

"While this scan certainly would not _rule out_ such diagnoses, that is... not what my findings indicate," the professor said. "Your brain displays reduced activity in the superoanterior semihemispheres, and there is evidence to suggest that it struggles to make any connection at all with your basolateral neural circuitplates."

Rodimus screwed up his face. "And what does that _mean?_ "

"That a lot has just been explained," Ratchet snorted.

"You might think so," Distrail interjected, sounding supremely pleased with himself. "However, my experience makes me suspect that it is merely a symptomatic indicator of a more fundamental issue. Our self-regulatory systems are constantly running diagnostics and dynamically prioritizing energy consumption to maximize efficiency based on sophisticated projec—" 

"Please hone in on a point quickly," Rodimus pleaded. He'd never thought that he'd _miss_ Perceptor's refreshing brevity.

While he didn't deign to address the slight, Rodimus noticed Distrail's momentary deflation. Unfortunately, it didn't last long; he swiftly reinvigorated himself in the course of his own rambling. "I wouldn't be able to say for absolute certain without having a direct look at your hardware, but I think it is probable that the decreased activity in sections of your brain module are reflective not of hardware _damage,_ but of _successful_ neural autoreconfiguration in response to external hypoutilization — that is to say, that your _spark_ exhibits a behavioral pattern that severely diminishes the _programmatic relevance_ of these neural subsections, and as such, your brain is _dynamically deprioritizing itself._ Isn't that fascinating?" 

"No." Rodimus shifted uncomfortably. "Um... I don't need to get _surgery,_ do I?"

"Ah, no, certainly not. If I'm correct, your brain module is just fine — and your spark is completely out of our hands, no matter its state," Distrail said, in what was a not terribly reassuring reassurance. "In any case, I don't think this anomaly has much meaningful impact on your rational intellect, and I wouldn't recommend invasive diagnosis unless this were precipitating a level of antisocial behavior that posed immediate danger to those around you." 

Wait, what? " _'Antisocial behavior'?_ What exactly are you saying is _wrong_ with me?" Rodimus demanded.

"Oh, didn't I explain?"

"Not in a series of words that didn't sound like you were casting a _spell._ "

Distrail opened his mouth again, but Ratchet cut him off with a forcefully resolute subject change. "What this all shows is that this's a really impressive piece of equipment. I think it'll be a big help to us," Ratchet said. "I've worked with neural imagers before but never anything this sophisticated. I'll have a much better idea of what I'm working with in reparative surgeries — I could've accelerated Rung's rehabilitation much further if I'd had proper diagnostic tools like this." 

Distrail smiled personably, apparently glad to be distracted from Rodimus's questions with more praise of his success. "We've just finalized the contract for a limited manufacturing run — there are four prototypes here at the University, and I wouldn't mind letting this one go to a fellow Cybertronian. Of course, I have a favor to ask," he said. "It's nothing too complicated, I promise."

Rodimus rolled his optics. "There's always a catch."

"What do you want us to do?" Ratchet asked.

Distrail worked to shut down the machine as he spoke. "A colleague of mine will also be hosting a seminar at the conference this weekend — the chair of my department, in fact. Now, the two of us have had a bit of a falling out as of late, and I won't bore you with the details, but the long and short of it is that I am being unfairly denied funding for my research due to one of his petty personal grudges. My hands are politically tied, and there's no one else I can call upon who might be able to help. I'd like for you to speak to him and try to bring him around to recognizing the inherent value of the work that I am doing here at the University."

"I don't know how you expect us to do that," Rodimus said. "I couldn't piece together one scrap about xenonerdology or whatever."

"I don't think persuading him will require much if any academic acumen. Truthfully, he is quite fond of mechanicals — I think seeing another of my fellow Cybertronians express a sincere interest in my work will be enough to change his mind. But don't let on that you've spoken with me, obviously."

Rodimus wasn't convinced. Nothing was ever _that_ easy. "What aren't you telling us?"

"I assure you, it really is that simple," Distrail said, standing up straight after he was finished setting everything in order. "I want you to flatter him, and convince him that restoring my funding was his own idea. It will require some charisma, but surely someone as charming as yourself shalln't be challenged by such a task."

"Haha, you think so? Th— wait, are you being sarcastic?"

"What?" Distrail lifted a hand to his spark in shock. "I would never presume to disrespect the great Rodimus Prime."

Rodimus couldn't help but smirk. "Oh, heh heh... you _have_ heard of me, huh?"

"Of course. What self-respecting bot _hasn't_ heard of the strongest, most courageous and modest — not to mention _handsome_ — Cybertronian of this shining new era? Truthfully, it's a miracle I've mustered the bravery to even speak to you. It's an _honor._ "

Maybe this guy wasn't so bad after all. "Wow, I'm like, super flattered? It's no big deal, haha. But hey, if you want an autograph, I'll totally hook you up."

Ratchet covered his face with his hands.

"At any rate," Distrail said, dodging the matter entirely. "Have you already booked a room at the hotel?"

"Yeah," Ratchet said.

"I'm sorry I can't offer you accommodation myself — I'd gladly do so, were we not required to at least maintain a pretense of being unassociated. In any case, I'll reimburse you for your trouble, naturally."

"So how and where are we gonna find this guy?" Rodimus asked.

"Oh, yes, of course. Hold on." Distrail searched around the lab until he found a data pad, and took a moment to navigate through its directories. When he found what he was looking for, he handed it to Rodimus; it had a brief biography of the alien in question, as well as a picture of its face. It was a phenomenally saggy creature, about 90% hanging jowls — and... wow. That was certainly a name. "My recommendation would be to either catch him after his seminar, or case out some nearby drinking establishments. He's a lush, to be frank." Distrail sighed. He obviously did not relish working with this guy. "Honestly — I think he'll find _you,_ if you put yourself in the right place." 

What did _that_ mean? Rodimus shook his head, and took a copy of the document for his own records. 

"Thanks," Ratchet said. "We'll try."

 

***

 

Professor Distrail graciously provided another cab for the ride back to the conference hotel. 

The return trip felt a lot shorter than the ride from the airport. The van took them straight to one of the especially pristine downtown areas, and let them out in front of the hotel — Rodimus hadn't realized exactly how upscale this whole affair _was._

"Damn," he said, looking up at the glittering tower. The massive building was intricately illuminated by a system of lights that changed colors; there was a massive digital billboard on the face, rotating between animated advertisements and announcements for the upcoming conference. Rodimus couldn't make sense of the alien geometry — some kind of holographic projection must've been involved on the facade. Parts of the building felt like they jut too far forward into his field of vision, or were recessed too far back. It made his optical processor hurt.

It was even more grand on the inside. The lobby of the hotel was an enormous hall flanked by tremendous columnar supports and a mezzanine that wrapped around the entire length of the room. Tellectus loved to do things _big._

Rodimus was distracted by his reverie by a rude tug from Ratchet. "Come on," he said, and made his way over to the reception desk.

The hotel attendant that greeted them was a mechanical, to the apparent delight of them both the attendant and Rodimus. He greeted Rodimus with a bright, baleen-filled grin, which Rodimus returned eagerly. Sure, the attendant may have been a quadrupedal six-limbed monstrosity with a neck nearly twice the height of Rodimus's entire body, but at least he wasn't a sloshing bag of meat juice.

"How may I help you this evening?" the attendant asked, with a pleasantly digital timber.

"We booked a room for this weekend," Rodimus said. "It should be under ' _Rodimus Prime_ '. I prepaid. Two keys, please."

The attendant quickly input the information into the desk machine. Within a minute, they had the keys and were on their way upstairs. The room was on the 17th floor at the end of a long hallway. 

Rodimus tapped his key card to the door sensor and let himself into the room. For some reason, the sight of the inside immediately pissed Ratchet off. "Is this your idea of a clever scheme to harass me?" he growled.

Oh, right. He was talking about how there was only one berth.

"What?" Rodimus said. "I didn't want to waste money on booking _two separate rooms_ for no good reason. I didn't think you were such a _brat_ that you were going to throw a tantrum over sharing a _hotel room._ "

Ratchet turned on him with a foul glower and a raised, scolding finger. "If you've somehow got it into your head that you can convince me to _share a berth with you_ and manipulate me into interfacing through some series of wacky contrivances out of a scrapshop porn vid, you aren't _just_ a worthless, indefensible piece of dirty slag, you are _an idiot._ Enjoy charging on the _floor._ " 

"Wow, what crawled up your aft and died? My life doesn't entirely revolve around _you,_ Ratchet," Rodimus huffed indignantly. The slim possibility of Ratchet being down for slabsharing was only a _minor_ consideration in his decision to book only a single room and berth. 

"I'm going to recharge," Ratchet spit, pushing past Rodimus to secure his place on the lone berth. 

Rodimus rolled his optics, shut the door and crossed to the far side of the room. The wall was filled entirely by panes of glass, giving the room a nice view overlooking the the city at night. The University hill was visible in the distance.

The moment of quiet reflection was interrupted by Ratchet making a lot of disgruntled noises. "This thing is too _soft,_ " he complained. "I don't understand how organics _sleep_ on these _beds_. There's no _support._ And I feel like my plating is going to rip all these cloth objects to shreds."

Rodimus looked over his shoulder and dryly said, "Well, you're free to come join me on the floor, Ratchet."

Ratchet's face twisted into something hideous. Rodimus watched in disbelief as the medic set about rearranging the furniture. He moved the side tables and the lamps out of the way, and then painstakingly pushed the berth closer to the center of the room so he would have space to settle down on the other side, away from Rodimus.

"Wow, are you like, kidding me, man?" Rodimus said.

" _Goodnight,_ Rodimus," Ratchet said, before he laid himself down and disappeared from sight.


	7. Chapter 7

Not surprisingly, Rodimus did not get a very good charge. 

He'd gotten so used to being able to plug in on the Lost Light that it was difficult to even initiate stasis, and the carpeting of the hotel floor wasn't especially comfortable, either. He spent much of the night tossing and turning — at least until Ratchet angrily insisted that he cut it out.

Rodimus couldn't even remember whether he managed to sleep at all. It didn't _feel_ like ten straight conscious hours had passed since he set down, but he still felt pretty tired by the time the Tellectian sun rudely burst through the gaps in the hotel blinds. He finally accepted defeat, pulled himself up and quietly tread across the room to check to see if Ratchet was awake. The medic was sprawled out on his stomach, face pressed into the plush carpet. Oral solvent soaked the fibers around Ratchet's mouth. 

Ratchet certainly _looked_ like he was still asleep, and Rodimus was startled when he spoke. "Are you just going to stare at me all day?"

Well, Rodimus _did_ have a good view of Ratchet's aft. He played it off. "Was trying to decide whether I should wake you up or not," Rodimus said.

"I'm awake," Ratchet grumbled. His optics flickered online and he sat up, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. From the look on his face, he wasn't that well rested, either. "The conference is probably started by now. We may as well go down."

Rodimus shrugged. "I guess."

The two of them made their way down to the hotel lobby, where the conference had indeed begun in full swing. Hordes of well-dressed scientists moved around the informational desks and crowded the elevators; the hotel was outfitted with a tremendous array of signage and directions to various events. 

"I need a drink," Ratchet announced.

"Ratchet, it's like..." Rodimus glanced around for the time. His internal chronometers weren't calibrated to this planet. "Wow, 12 past 45 o'clock, apparently. Okay."

That was apparently no object. "Bar," Ratchet said, once he spotted a large sign indicating the direction of the hotel bar, and headed straight in that direction. Rodimus didn't think it was even likely that this hotel would serve engex or anything drinkable by a Cybertronian, but he had no choice but to follow along. 

As soon as they arrived, though, Rodimus spotted something much more interesting. He threw out a hand to stop Ratchet before they crossed the threshold into the bar area, and pulled him over the corner so they wouldn't be seen.

"Ratchet, look," Rodimus said, gesturing towards the bar. "That's the guy, isn't it? I'm not just being alien racist?"

Ratchet peered critically from around the doorframe at the blubberous alien teetering on the barstool. "I… I think so, yeah," Ratchet said. "I'm honestly not that good at telling aliens apart, either."

"Well, he's the only alien we've seen of that species since we got here, and Distrail _did_ say he'd probably be drinking."

"Yeah. I guess we should go talk to him."

Rodimus screwed up his face. "What do I say?"

"We could bring up his work…"

"What does he even _do?_ "

"Um," Ratchet mumbled. He retrieved his datapad with a copy of the information Distrail had given to them and stared at it closely. "It says in his dossier that he's primarily active in the field of comparative neuromechanical biology and psychology amongst _ex nihilo_ mechanicals."

Rodimus's optics glazed over. "Great. I know so much about that."

Ratchet scrolled down the pad. "He published a thesis on the disposition towards violent conflict ingrained in mechanicals…"

"What? That's just offensive."

"Between us and the Stentarians I'm not sure we have much room to protest," Ratchet said. His expression twisted as he caught notice of another item on the alien's list of published works.

"What is it?" Rodimus asked.

"Oh boy. He has a paper on the emergence of sexual biomimicry in mechanical races that have achieved space-faring technological development."

"Oh no…"

"The abstract is actually kind of interesting." Ratchet brought a hand to his mouth in contemplation and he scrolled further down. "Did you know that every mechanical race has moved towards modular implementation of organic copulatory mechanics within three generational periods subsequent to its engagement in galactic colonial expansion?"

"Huh."

"Hm. It does add up… the S-V system came into fashion during Nova Prime's campaign of galactic imperialism."

Rodimus wasn't sure he liked the implications of that. "I never thought of it as copying organics before. That's… kind of gross. I don't even want to think about fleshling interfacing."

"Well, you apparently do so constantly, according to this," Ratchet said, gesturing demonstratively to the datapad.

"At least that's something I can carry a conversation about," Rodimus said. "I guess we should go over there."

"Yeah," Ratchet reluctantly agreed, but clearly wasn't interested in being the first to move. Resigned to his plight, Rodimus cleared his vents and turned the corner to stride confidently into the bar. Ratchet trailed behind.

Rodimus came up to stand next to their mark, but played it cool. He addressed the alien behind the bar first. "Hey, you don't serve mechanical booze here, do you?"

The bartender gave him an apologetic look. "No, sorry," it answered. "We don't get many mechanicals in here, really — there might be somewhere you can get to down in the tourist district."

It seemed like Rodimus's tactic was going to have immediate results. The alien scientist sat next to him eagerly spoke up. "Actually," he interjected. "There are three decent places that serve engex here in Central. None of it is _amazing,_ mind you, but it'll get the job done."

Ratchet stood by wordlessly, his posture awkwardly stiff. Some wingman he was. Rodimus turned to face the alien with his brightest smile. "Really?" he asked. "Are they nearby?"

Rodimus couldn't tell if the alien had become honestly flustered, or if it was just the booze making him loopy — either way, Rodimus was glad to see his winning charm wasn't restricted by differences of species. "Ah, they're a bit of a trek, I'm afraid. I'd offer you a tour, but I'm booked for a seminar this afternoon... I can give you directions, if you'd like."

In feigned enthusiasm, Rodimus forced his optics to brighten. "Oh, are you speaking at the conference?"

The alien's uncomfortably moist maw parted into a smile, exposing a revolting herbivorous diastema. "Why, yes, I am! Are you here for the conference yourself?"

"Yeah!" Rodimus exclaimed. "I'm not a speaker or anything, though. What's your name? I'm Rodimus." He extended a friendly hand and tried to contain his disgust when the alien shook it with its plump, clammy mitt.

"It's a _pleasure_ to meet you, Rodimus. Please, call me Yubnub."

Rodimus wrenched back his hand, lifted it to his spark and looked to Ratchet in shock. He was going to give himself a Rodimus star for this pro acting. When he turned back to the alien, it was with his best starstruck wonder. "Wow, like, _Dr. Yubnub Mk'hungus_ Yubnub?" He struggled to not choke on the syllables. 

Yubnub's face brightened considerably. "You've heard of me?"

"Yeah, of course! I love your work on —" Rodimus quickly looked to Ratchet for help.

Ratchet looked surprised to be put on the spot. "Uh, warfare trends in mechanical races," he gruffly supplied. _No, idiot, the other one!_

"Uh, yeah, that, but also, especially, the stuff about — about interfacing."

Finally, Ratchet came to the rescue with the jargon he was looking for. "Organic sexual biomimicry in mechanicals."

"Yeah! Yeah. That paper, that you did — great stuff. Really engrossing. Couldn't put it down, I was so fascinated, honestly _amazing_ — I couldn't believe it —"

"Rodimus," Ratchet interrupted in exasperation.

"Anyway, me and my partner Ratchet here love your work and we'd love to talk to you about it sometime. Right, Ratchet?"

Ratchet was an absolutely garbage actor. "Yeah," he said, utterly monotone.

Yubnub seemed a little overwhelmed by Rodimus's enthusiasm, but not deterred. "I — wow. Thank you very much. I'm very flattered. I'd love to discuss my work with you — after my seminar, perhaps? I'd surely have time to show you around town then."

"Yeah, sure. When is it? We'll come watch," Rodimus said.

"Ah, it's in, hmm..." Yubnub took a moment to do a mental calculation. "Three Cybertronian hours, I believe, in the ballroom," he said. Wow, a few hours before running a seminar was certainly a great time to get drunk. "Quite a large draw. As I'm sure you know, I'm Chair of the research department of Xenointersectional Neurobiology of the University of Paramount Sciences..."

Rodimus suffered another rambling exercise in self-aggrandizement before he found a polite point to excuse himself from the conversation. Yubnub bid them farewell with a joyful smile and a drunken wave. Rodimus feigned an exaggerated gag the moment they were out of sight.

The conference was ramping up, and they had some time to kill, so Rodimus and Ratchet wandered around the hotel floor. There were informational data pamphlets up at the front desk; they each accepted a copy of one onto their devices and took a seat in the lobby to look over the programming options.

"There's a panel about cross-species anatomical training for medical professionals in 20 minutes," Ratchet suggested.

"Booooooorrriiiinnnggg," Rodimus complained, his head rolling back onto the backrest of the chair. He was splayed lazily in his seat in a posture that could best be described as _melted._

Ratchet sighed. "Okay, how about... there's one about scaling of medical and scientific equipment to service galactically integrated settlements."

"Ugh."

"Um... there's one about functional apartheid between the principle populated morphologies of — oh, Distrail is on that one. We can't do that one."

Rodimus didn't have time to come up with his next dismissive whine — he nearly jumped out of his frame when he suddenly heard the familiar monotone of Distrail's creepy drone sound out from apparently nowhere. "Hello," it said. Rodimus looked down to see its piercing eyes staring up at him; he put his legs down when he realized he'd drawn them up onto his seat in fright.

" _Primus,_ " Rodimus cursed. "Don't _sneak up_ on people like that."

"I was not sneaking," the little robot said, deadpan. "I proceeded in a straight trajectory from the entrance and made no attempts to disguise my approach."

" _Ugghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,_ " Rodimus groaned.

Ratchet seemed to take pity on the robot enough to disentangle it from the awkward exchange. He kneeled down on the floor to better address it. "What was your name again? Diji?" he asked.

"My designation is デジタル友達Ｆ２００, or _Dejitomo,_ for short," it said.

"Dejitomo," Ratchet repeated. "Dejitomo. I'll remember it next time. I'm sorry."

"My name is not important," Dejitomo said. "Have you made contact?"

Rodimus wasn't sure how much of this they should be discussing out in the open. "Uh, yeah," he said. "We're going to the — thing. In a bit. Then we'll talk to him more after."

"Okay. I have come with an additional directive."

"What is it?" Ratchet asked.

Dejitomo extended a hand. "Please give me a datapad."

Ratchet did as instructed. The tiny mech had difficulty handling the large size of the datapad, but with Ratchet's help, it managed to get it upright and then jack itself into the machine for a data transfer. It took a few short moments, and then unplugged. Rodimus only realized that it had been carrying something in its other hand when it pushed it into Ratchet's hand — it was large in its own, but minuscule in Ratchet's. Confused, Ratchet asked, "What is this?"

"I've included instructions in the data transfer," Dejitomo said. "I must leave now. I shouldn't be seen with you. Goodbye." With that, the small robot turned on its heel and strode out of the hotel. 

Ratchet and Rodimus shared an odd look before Ratchet looked down to investigate what Dejitomo had left on the datapad, carefully holding the small round trinket in his hand. "She says that our 'contact' wants us to..." Ratchet thought better of it as he read further, and just handed the pad over to Rodimus.

Rodimus took it and made a quick scan. Distrail, apparently, now wanted them to attempt to copy and destroy the contents of Yubnub's personal research files, which he supposedly brought with him when he traveled. Distrail assured them that he had other agents in place to deal with any backups, and included instructions for how to do so: they would only have to get within 10 feet of his device and deploy the tool given to them to remotely and undetectably infect the machine with a virus that would corrupt the machine's data. He also added that it was probably best if his name were never mentioned to the other professor.

"So much for _nothing too complicated,_ " Rodimus said, a sneer curling onto his face. "I knew that son of a glitch Con was holding something back."

"Yeah, this is a little... yeah," Ratchet said.

"So, what? Do you want to bail? Take our shuttle and go before we get in over our heads?"

Ratchet had to take a moment to consider it. "Ugh... maybe, but — I really want that imaging system."

_No, then._ Rodimus sighed. "How are we even going to do this? Where does he keep his files? How are we going to _get_ to them?"

"They might be in his hotel room?" Ratchet suggested. "Maybe we could get him to invite us up to see some of his research."

Rodimus gave Ratchet a blank look. Ratchet swiftly grew uncomfortable under the stare. " _What?_ " he asked.

"You want us to _seduce_ him," Rodimus concluded.

Ratchet's optics immediately went wide. "What!? No! _Slag,_ no. That wasn't what I was saying at all!"

"Then what? That's generally how you _get_ invited into somebody's hotel room. And he obviously thinks we're alien sexy."

"I don't think he wants to interface with us," Ratchet defensively protested. "That's ridiculous. We're not even the same species — we're not even in the same _taxonomy._ Why would an organic alien think Cybertronians were attractive?"

Rodimus laughed explosively. "Ratchet, do you know literally anything about _anything?_ "

"Wh— but —" It was hard not to revel in how flustered Ratchet was growing at even the _suggestion_. 

"Come on, if he's writing papers about our sticky parts chances are he's DTF —"

" _What?_ "

" _Primus,_ Ratchet, DTF. You're not _that_ old. Keep up."

"Rodimus, I —"

"God, Ratchet. If I have to frag this guy, I hope he's not — just, let him not be one of those species that only has one or the other set of parts. _Maybe_ I could put my spike in that thing. I'm working myself up to it. But the thought of letting that sloppy meat man penetrate me is — is — I'd rather shoot myself, seriously."

Ratchet looked very much like he wanted to shoot himself anyway.

Rodimus shuddered. "Can you even imagine? Having an _organic spike_ in your valve? I feel sick. I'm gonna hurl. _Oh god,_ no, what if he wants me to give him oral? Oh my god."

Having seemingly had more than enough of that, Ratchet stood up. "I'm going to a panel. Any panel. Come or don't. Actually, no, just stay here. I'll be back in two and a half hours. Bye."

 

***

 

It wasn't as if Rodimus had expected any differently, but Yubnub's panel was excruciatingly boring. Rodimus had checked back to the title of the panel plenty of times — "Practical Applications of Comparative Mechanical Neurobiology and Psychoanalysis to the Optimization of Supplementary Biomechanical Enhancement of Integrated Organic Neurological Systems" — but after two of the most painful hours of his life, he was no closer to having _any_ idea what was going on. Rodimus wasn't big on prayer, but he thanked Primus in earnest for allowing time to continue in a linear fashion and bring an end to his torment.

Ratchet only slipped in towards the end of the Q&A portion of the seminar, which Rodimus kicked himself for not thinking of. He could've been doing literally anything other than listening to this fatuous windbag carry on about the "psychotherapeutic maintenance of the biosynthetic mind".

The two of them lingered by the stage as the surprisingly full crowd began to disperse. Yubnub beckoned them up when he spotted them; Rodimus made his way over with confidence and a smile, despite his apprehension in the face of the leering stares of the other two aliens on the panel.

"Ah! So glad you could make it," Yubnub exclaimed as Rodimus approached. "Did you find our discussion this evening elucidating?"

Rodimus didn't know what elucidating was, but he nodded affirmatively anyway. "Yeah. Great stuff. Me and Ratchet here had a blast. Learned a lot. Right, Ratchet?"

Ratchet grunted. It sounded more like he had a clogged exhaust port than an agreement, but Yubnub didn't comment. 

"Wonderful." Yubnub remembered his colleagues, and gestured to them personably. "Ah, Dr. Blump, Professor Squmpet — meet Rodimus and Ratchet. They're a couple of bright Cybertronians who have taken an interest in our work!"

Ugh. Rodimus wasn't going to have to frag all three of them, was he? He tried to keep a smiling face as the two scientists icily waved at him. His mouth froze in an uncomfortable rictus when he realized he couldn't pry his eyes away from the pendulous breast-like structures that folded over Professor Squmpet's knobby knees. "Nice to meet you," Rodimus choked out.

Thankfully, neither of the scientists seemed to have much interest in speaking with him; they got up and set about collecting their things as Yubnub tried to strike up some conversation. "I wonder, are you familiar with my research partner, Professor Distrail?"

Rodimus was prepared for this. "No, why?"

"Ah, I was just curious," Yubnub said. "You see, he's the only Cybertronian on the planet, actually. I thought maybe — "

Rodimus laughed harshly. "What, we all know each other?" he asked, with a little snide tinge.

Bingo. Yubnub seemed taken aback. "Ah, I didn't mean to imply — I was only — my apologies. That was terribly rude of me."

"It's all right," Rodimus said, grinning pointedly. "I might find it in me to forgive you if you buy us a drink."

Ratchet snorted. Rodimus heard one of the scientists behind them suppress a groan. All the same, Yubnub seemed flattered. "Why, of course," he said, wearing a bashful smile that made him six times more hideous than he already was. "How about I give you two a tour of downtown right now?"

"Sounds good."

 

***

 

It turned out that Yubnub's idea of a "tour" involved a stretch limo with a bar. 

Not that Rodimus was about to complain about a little opportunity to pre-game. He spent the fifteen minute drive from the hotel to the entertainment district treating himself to some surprisingly choice engex — apparently Yubnub just kept that on tap. Distrail's problem with this guy seemed to be getting a little clearer. Maybe it was _problems._

Ratchet looked about as uncomfortable with all of this as Rodimus had ever seen him. He just had nothing to say to this creepy little gremlin, and Yubnub grew reluctant to even engage him after enough frosty rebukes. Rodimus would've appreciated a little assistance, but he had enough charisma to make up for Ratchet.

At least until the topic veered away from flirtatious smalltalk into dicier territory. The alien looked wryly between them, and Rodimus was weary of whatever question was going to come attached to _that_ expression. "Are you two… ?"

Ratchet and Rodimus both answered at the same time — "No," Ratchet insisted. "Yeah," Rodimus said.

They looked between each other in frustration. Eventually, Rodimus supplied, "It's complicated."

"No, it really isn't," Ratchet gritted out.

God, Ratchet was ruining it. The alien held up his hands. "It's really none of my business. I'm sorry if I dredged up any bad blood."

"Don't worry about it," Rodimus said, waving a hand to shut Ratchet up.

By the time their drive dropped them off in front of the bar, Rodimus was already half of the way to blasted. His footing out of the limo was a little uneven, and he privately relished both Ratchet and Yubnub rushing to be the first to steady him.

"Careful, there," Yubnub affably warned Rodimus, while Ratchet looked down at them with a dour face and apparent regret over his reflexive compulsion to assist.

Compared to the other bars they'd passed on the trip, _"The Iron Rod"_ didn't seem to have that much of a draw — there was no line wrapped around the building like half the places they'd seen. 

"This is the only specialty mechanical bar in town," Yubnub explained. "It's really one of the biggest mechanical gathering places in the system; very few places even accommodate mechanicals at all, let alone cater specifically to them."

"Uh, cool, I guess," Rodimus said. He supposed it was better than having to hang around in a sweaty pit of drunk fleshlings.

"Indeed! I come here often."

Ratchet was a bit thick. "Why do you frequent a mech bar?"

"It's quite nice," Yubnub evasively replied. Rodimus looked at Ratchet just to roll his eyes.

It seemed that Yubnub wasn't joking; inside of the bar were more mechanicals than Rodimus had yet seen on the entire planet. Not a Cybertronian to be found, though; the bar was filled with mechs of all shapes and sizes, but he had no idea where any of them came from. He probably wouldn't see much warmer a reception than any they got from the organics.

Rodimus hadn't even registered the numerous "exotic dancers" until Ratchet uncomfortably mumbled something about it.

The professor showed Rodimus and Ratchet to his favorite place in the bar, which was a secluded little table towards the back corner of the building. He graciously directed them to sit, asked if they had any preference for drinks, and left to pick something up from the bar.

"We should pretend to be together," Rodimus insisted the moment Yubnub was out of earshot.

Ratchet was sat near the corner next to Rodimus, and with Yubnub gone, he was less inclined to hide his discomfort. Ratchet was having none of it. "Why? Doing that has no relevant benefit to this at all."

Rodimus shrugged before he relaxed into the plush seating of his chair. "He's into mechanicals doing it, right? Let him imagine us doing it. He'll like us more."

"I think he's going to do that whether we pretend to be together or not," Ratchet grumbled, looking over to where Yubnub was talking animatedly at the bar to one of the dancers.

"Yeah, but imagine if you like… touched me a little," Rodimus said, grinning slyly. Ratchet seemed to become uncomfortably aware of how he was boxed in. "Sit close to me and touch my thighs. Look at me like you want to devour me. It'll drive him nuts."

Ratchet scowled angrily. "No, it'd drive _you_ nuts."

At Ratchet's mounting animosity, Rodimus backed off. He didn't want to get punched. "I mean, yeah, but also, him? Look, if we don't pump this guy until he's basically begging to huff our exhausts we're not going to convince him to take us anywhere and you aren't getting your ritzy brain machine. I'm just trying to help you, Ratchet."

In lieu of actually responding, Ratchet just muttered darkly and looked at his hands. 

Before Rodimus had a chance to push any further, Yubnub reappeared with their drinks; Rodimus could immediately tell that the alien had botched his order. He had _explicitly_ said he wanted a frosted rim! Rodimus tried to contain his visible disappointment when he tasted the drink and quickly realized that the cocktail had _propylene_ and not _ethylene,_ which is what he'd _asked_ for. "Thanks, this is great," Rodimus lied.

Ratchet only ever ordered straight engex, so it didn't look like the professor managed to screw that up. He wordlessly accepted his drink and got a swift start on getting plastered. Rodimus hoped that maybe a little juice would flush the tar out of his valve. 

Despite the inaccuracy of the order, it was no less effective at delivering Rodimus to a state of drunkenness. Rodimus milked the professor's seemingly unending generosity for all it was worth, and accepted drink after drink until his flirty candor became a bit more than an opportunistic affectation. 

Rodimus was itching for a screw, and the inebriation almost made the prospect of banging an alien liveable. Yubnub was definitely down, he could tell — the alien was practically hanging all over him — so it was just a matter of pushing him over the edge to invite Rodimus back to the hotel. His code scrambled as it was, Rodimus went down the simple path: blunt and crude.

"I'd frag him," Rodimus remarked, gesturing in the direction of one of the mechanical dancers doing business on the bar. 

Yubnub choked. "O-oh, you mean, Sparkletwerk? Yes, that's — um, she has a certain beauty, I suppose. From the Gliese systems — not an ex-nihilo, actually, they killed their originator species — she has a bit of a substance problem, I recall. But, um, yes, if you discount cert—"

_God, shut up._ "You think she'll give me a dance?" Rodimus asked, making a point of running his tongue over his lips as he gazed directly into the alien's rheumy eyes.

Ratchet's optics looked like they were about to boil out of his skull. "Rodimus —"

The professor was uncomfortably fingering his jowls. "Well, almost certainly, but — I must say, if you have the money, there are better dancers —"

"Fine, whatever, hey, why don't you pick the one you think is best and get him to give us a little private show?" Rodimus tersely suggested. He compensated for his short patience with a none-too-subtle brush of the alien's leg beneath the table. Yubnub practically jumped out of his seat.

"I don't want a private show," Ratchet objected. Rodimus had forgotten he was even still there. 

"Haha, lighten up, Ratch," Rodimus exclaimed, throwing an arm around Ratchet's shoulders. He felt the medic immediately stiffen, but rather than push Rodimus away, Ratchet merely chugged the last of his latest drink. "Bring it on!"

Flustered, Yubnub rose and disappeared into the bustling crowd. It wasn't long before he returned with another mech in tow, though this one towered over the three of them formidably.

"This is my good friend, Devastructor XIII," Yubnub cheerily said, gesturing demonstrably. "He's definitely one of the finest employees at this establishment."

Devastructor XIII's chest jutted so far out that Rodimus had trouble even seeing his face from where he was seated. The massive bot cut a rather imposing figure, but Rodimus couldn't deny there was something trashily attractive about the perpetual roar of his undoubtedly primitive engines. The empurataesque single ocular served an additional layer of dangerous allure. Rodimus supposed getting a lap dance from this thing wouldn't be too bad — but he wasn't anticipating the unmoderated volume of his voice.

"HOW CAN DEVASTRUCTOR BE OF SERVICE?" Devastructor inquired, striking a sultry pose.

"Haha, um," Rodimus began, taken aback. He glanced to Ratchet, who was just holding his head in his hands. "What's for sale?"

"DEVASTRUCTOR IS AN EXPERIENCED EROTIC DANCER. DEVASTRUCTOR WILL OFFER A BASIC PRIVATE DANCE FOR 1,000 CREDITS. IF CUSTOMER WISHES TO TOUCH DEVASTRUCTOR DURING THE DANCE... DEVASTRUCTOR MUST DEMAND ANOTHER 1,000 CREDITS. IF CUSTOMER DESIRES SOMETHING MORE... PRIVATE, DEVASTRUCTOR IS OPEN TO NEGOTIATION..."

"What's the exchange rate on that? Nah, forget it, I can get Drift to cover it later. Give me the touchy dance."

Rodimus enthusiastically pulled his chair over to make the proceedings more convenient, but Ratchet promptly stood up. "I'm sick," Ratchet exclaimed, his voice cracking. Devastructor stopped in his tracks. 

Yubnub immediately looked to Ratchet with grave concern. "Oh no! What's the matter, Ratchet?"

"I'm gonna... too much to drink, uh, might purge... I better get back to the hotel. To be safe," Ratchet lied, taking the opportunity to squeeze past Rodimus.

"Oh, come on, Ratchet," Rodimus sighed, reaching to grab at Ratchet in his escape. Ratchet shook off his clumsy drunken grip in reflexive disgust.

Yubnub was pretty unperceptive for a scientist. "Are you okay? Do you want me to bring you to a hospital?"

"Oh, no. I'm a doctor, it's fine. Just need a bit of, uh, rest," Ratchet insisted.

Rodimus's optics rolled into his head. "He's just _jealous._ "

Ratchet's head whipped around to deliver Rodimus the nastiest look he had _ever_ seen. "I am not — I am not _jealous!_ What is _wrong_ with you!?"

"What's wrong with _me?_ I'm not the one being _rude_ to poor Devastructor here, who is just trying to ply his trade."

Ratchet looked up to Devastructor apologetically. "I — I — It's not you, it's me," Ratchet blurted out, before setting out for the door with startling haste. 

Rodimus darted after him, leaving Yubnub and Devastructor hopelessly abandoned in his wake. He managed to catch up to Ratchet outside of the bar, where the Medic was trying to hail a taxi.

"I'm going back to the hotel on my own," Ratchet snapped, before Rodimus had a chance to say anything. Rodimus just laughed. 

"All right, well, I guess I'll be taking it from here on my own then, huh?"

Ratchet grumbled darkly, "Yeah, whatever."

"I hope you remember this later," Rodimus spat petulantly. "I hope you don't forget that I let an _organic alien_ frag my valve apart so _you_ could get your stupid brain camera. I hope you don't forget that I _put my tongue in an alien's excretory chute or whatever,_ for _you._ "

The look Ratchet gave Rodimus as he backed away with his hands raised in a shrug verged on a thousand yard stare. The medic said nothing when Rodimus turned to leave and relocate Yubnub. A cab pulled up to answer Ratchet's call.

Rodimus caught Yubnub just as he'd fought his way out of the bustling bar; the alien seemed very relieved at the sight of him. "Rodimus! Where's Ratchet?"

"I just saw him get in a cab on his own," Rodimus sighed. "He's long gone."

"Oh, I'm sorry..."

"Ugh," Rodimus said, rubbing his temples. "I think I really did it this time — I should've known, I mean, I guess we're on a 'break' right now, but he's always been jealous like this — he's _furious_ with me. It's probably not a good idea for me to go back to our room tonight... man, I'm gonna have to book another room..."

Jackpot. It wasn't what Rodimus had planned, but it seemed like Ratchet had come through for him after all — Yubnub immediately swooped in to the rescue. "Oh, no, no, that isn't necessary — please, you're welcome to stay in my room tonight, Rodimus."

Rodimus made a show of perking up. "Really? You wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all!"

"Wow... that's really generous, thank you so much," Rodimus swooned. "I hope there's some way I can make it up to you."

_That_ got exactly the lecherous look that Rodimus was both expecting and dreading.

Rodimus got into a cab with Yubnub in a bit of a daze, and mindlessly went along with whatever vapid conversation the alien tried to pull him into. All he could think about was his horrible fate.

Once they arrived back at the hotel, Rodimus braced himself for the worst and followed Yubnub into one of the cramped elevator shafts of the hotel. The trip up to the 12th floor felt like it would never end, especially with the jowly alien drunkenly raking his eyes up and down Rodimus's frame. Ideas for smalltalk escaped him under the scrutiny.

When the doors opened up onto the hotel floor and Yubnub stepped out to lead the way, Rodimus trailed behind. The reality of the situation was finally starting to sink in. He was about to interface with an organic alien, and not even a _remotely_ good looking one. This was the lowest point of his life.

If this enormous act of self-sacrifice didn't convince Ratchet to frag him _nothing would._

It was difficult to force himself to step over the threshold into the alien's hotel room, but he managed; he came to stand in the center of the room, at an awkward loss for words, as Yubnub stumbled about.

"Care for a drink?" the alien offered, after fishing another flask out of his luggage. He swished its contents with a broad smile.

Rodimus put up his hands. "Haha, uh, no thanks. Had enough tonight," he said. It wasn't a dishonest answer.

"Suit yourself," Yubnub said. "Ah, I'm afraid there's only one bed."

"It's cool," Rodimus said. He swallowed his own solvent and moved to take a seat at the edge of the suite's large berth. It creaked perilously under his weight. "Hey, I was wondering — are you working on any new research lately?"

The alien seemed a bit perplexed by the question. "Well, of course... I'm always working on research. It's my job, after all."

"I mean, you know... any _cool_ stuff. Stuff nobody's seen before. Maybe even... top secret stuff."

Yubnub rubbed his head. "My field is publicly funded comparative neurobiology... there aren't really too many secrets to be had, here."

_Oh, come on._ "What are you working on that you think is cool?"

As Yubnub took a moment to consider it, Rodimus took the opportunity to stretch out on the berth in a way he hoped was both provocative and not _too_ unsubtle. Dread pooled in his tanks as he watched the alien take the hint. 

"Well, there is one thing I've been researching for quite some time..." Yubnub approached the berth with a revoltingly lecherous smile. "There's a chance you might even be able to contribute to my data."

Rodimus rolled onto his back, and just slightly parted his legs. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

Time seemed to slow down as the alien's knee depressed the edge of the bed. "Have you ever considered... _interspecies interfacing?_ "

_God no._ Oh no no no. Rodimus struggled to contain his disgust as this saggy, oily, nasty flesh beast attempted to crawl up his body in a mockery of a seductive display. He could smell the alien engex stench wafting from those nauseating jowls. His tanks were about to purge themselves. "H-hey, why don't we put something on to get us in the mood?" Rodimus suggested, half from tactical consideration and half desperate self-preservation. Any extra second bought to save him from the inevitable was worth it.

Yubnub stopped. "Ah, some romantic music?"

"Er, no, I was thinking more like some hardcore pornography."

"Oh! Well, I suppose — perhaps the hotel will have —"

"Maybe something from your personal collection?" Rodimus suggested. "Um, if you have any, you know — _Cybertronian_ porn —"

Tension dissipated from Rodimus's body when Yubnub drew back. "Yes, I could probably dig something up from my files... let me just go get my travel machine..."

All right. He was close — fry the machine and he was good. Maybe he might even be able to make an excuse to get out without having to frag this hideous creep. That'd be a huge relief.

Rodimus nervously watched as Yubnub slid off the berth to extract his valuables from the hotel's safety deposit box — the alien retrieved a rather bulky computer and an external drive that presumably contained the research Rodimus needed to blow. _Jackpot._

Yubnub took a seat on the end of the bed and began to set up. This was probably Rodimus's best chance — _well, here goes nothing._ He inconspicuously retrieved the object Distrail had given him from subspace, braced himself and pressed the button on the tiny device.

Rodimus froze in shock as the small object noisily came to life; Yubnub, of course, immediately took notice as the whirring gizmo rattled in Rodimus's hands. Rodimus immediately went on the defensive. "Um, hey, hold on, I don't know what that is, uh —"

The alien didn't have time to properly react before the sphere aligned, calibrated and shot a thin metal rod directly between his eyes.

Rodimus's jaw dropped open as Yubnub fell and crumpled to the ground.

"Oh no," Rodimus breathed out in disbelief, crawling frantically to look where Yubnub had fallen off the berth. "Oh no no no no no, what?" He scrambled off and rushed to kneel at the fallen alien's side — when Rodimus turned him over, his face was frozen in an expression of surprise, but there was nothing behind his wide glassy eyes. A thin trickle of cyan fluid streamed from the tiny pinhole wound.

Rodimus covered his mouth with a shaking hand. This was bad. This was really, really bad. How did he not see this coming? He couldn't believe he'd allowed himself to be duped like this — this deal was already so shady that he hadn't even imagined that it could've gotten _worse._

Rodimus had no idea what to _do._ They were going to have to get off the planet, clearly — but what if someone found the body before they were able to escape? The hotel was probably covered in cameras. There was no way he'd never been seen together with the alien, and as one of three Cybertronians on the entire planet, he must have stuck out horribly. Everyone he even so much as passed that night would remember him. He looked frantically around the small hotel suite for his options.

He was going to have to hide the body, but _where?_ Someone would be through to clean the room in the morning, and that was only a couple of hours away. He might be able to hide it under the berth, but organic bodies started to decay and stink awfully fast, didn't they? Oh, Primus. Maybe he could... cut it into pieces and put it inside of his frame...

Rodimus didn't have the tools to do a clean job, but Ratchet did. Ratchet would be able to amputate the alien's gangly limbs and the two of them would have more than enough space to smuggle them out of the building. They could dump the parts in different places and have enough time to get offworld before the authorities pieced it together. 

Ratchet. He needed Ratchet. Rodimus stood up and shakily fumbled for his comm. "Ratchet," Rodimus said as soon as he made the link. "Ratchet, I really need your help."

Ratchet heard the panic in his tone immediately. "Rodimus, what happened?"

"Please, just, come up to room 1215. Right now. Haha, wow, this is, uh, bad, I — this is really bad —"

"Rodimus, calm down. I'm coming. Don't do anything stupid," Ratchet said, and dropped the connection.

Rodimus nervously licked his lips. He was going to have to do something about Yubnub's blood. It was going to stain the carpet. They would know what happened if they found blood. Rodimus gracelessly climbed to his feet and rushed to the bathroom to get a bunch of towels and one of those organic soaps and a cup of water. When he returned he moved the corpse — there was already so much blood in the carpet from the exit wound he never even thought about. He put a towel under Yubnub's head in its new position and used another to soak up the spilled blood as best he could. He wet the bar of soap and tried scrubbing the stain out, but it wasn't doing much good. Rodimus's hands were shaking so badly.

This was hardly the first time Rodimus had taken a life, but that was war. It didn't matter. There was no getting "caught" in war.

Yubnub was bleeding through the towel so quickly. How was a corpse bleeding so much? Didn't alien blood pumps stop when they died? The color of his blood was so conspicuous against the light carpet. This was bad. This was really really bad.

_The bathtub._ Rodimus remembered the alien bathtub. He could put the corpse in the bathtub. Abandoning the stain for now, Rodimus crawled over to try to scoop the alien up into his arms. He dropped Yubnub like a pile of stones when he heard a knock at the door.

Ratchet! Thank god, thank god, thank god. Rodimus hurried to the door to open it and let him in. 

The last thing Rodimus remembered was the sight of 12 armored alien SWAT officers and the shock of 50,000 volts of electricity right to the chest.


	8. Chapter 8

Rodimus had no idea how long he'd been sitting in the dark.

The chair he'd been given to sit on was way too small for his frame and the rickety organic wood creaked perilously under his weight. He'd stand, if he hadn't been doing so for what felt like an age unto itself. He hadn't fueled or charged since he was detained and the fatigue was starting to take its toll.

The lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of the small room had gone out at least an hour ago and no one seemed to have noticed, so Rodimus couldn't see anything. He was so low on fuel that he didn't want to engage his night vision system. There was no point, anyway.

Rodimus let his forehead drop onto the equally unstable and undersized table before him and turned off his optical feed entirely. He was so tired. All he wanted was to charge but he hadn't been given any opportunity — and he was so drained that it would be unlikely he'd ever have a long enough window to get to a comfortable energy level on a cordless charge. Every minute that ticked by made him regret being too nervous to try to sleep where he was, but his levels were low enough that he wasn't sure if he would be _able_ to wake up if someone finally did come into the room. He had no idea what they would do to him if that happened — would they punish him? Would they be so ignorant of Cybertronian physiology that they'd just assume he'd killed himself and throw him in the scrap yard?

His body just about made the decision for him, anyway. 

Naturally, just as his systems were preparing for shutdown, the door swung open, filling the small room with blinding fluorescent light. Rodimus aborted his sleep processes and shot up in a panic, consequently causing the flimsy chair beneath him to crumple into a pile of splinters. 

Rodimus's misfortune seemed to have no effect on the dour disposition of the alien stood silhouetted in the bright light of the doorway. His optical systems were still calibrating themselves, but he could tell that this guy was nearly as unhappy to be there as he was.

"You're still here?" the alien asked. Rodimus didn't recognize this one, either in appearance or voice.

"Uh. Yeah," Rodimus said. He pulled himself up out of the wreckage. "Can I leave?"

He didn't get an answer. The alien simply shut the door again and left. 

_Great._

Rodimus just sat back down on the floor. He wanted to go _home._

Fortunately, he was not forced to repeat another hours long stint of isolation. After about 15 minutes, Rodimus was finally joined by another fat alien officer attempting to lug two chairs and a lamp into the room. Given that it was half Rodimus's size, dealing with the chair sized for a Cybertronian was visibly an ordeal. He considered offering to help, but that thought was pretty quickly chased away by his bitter resentment for the miserable day he'd been having.

"It looks like someone was scheduled to interrogate you three hours ago, but the guys went on a donut run and it got a little hectic," the alien said in a completely unaffected deadpan.

Rodimus couldn't tell if it was being serious or not.

While Rodimus was certainly not an expert on alien physiology, everything about this poor saggy bastard's movements and mannerisms telegraphed the heavy fatigue of age. The alien slammed the lamp down on the table and set up the chairs on opposite ends after kicking away the wooden wreck. It grabbed the tangled cord of the lamp and, after working out the knots, began its attempt to stretch the cable over to the socket on the wall.

"Hold on, I need to go get an extension cord," it grumbled.

"Why not just move the table?" Rodimus asked.

"It's bolted to the ground so you can't use it to pummel my body."

Rodimus sighed as he was left alone yet again. 

The officer returned with an excessive spool of cables, but they did the job and the room was finally illuminated by _some_ amount of light. Rodimus reluctantly took a seat after being directed to; this chair was metal, at least. 

The alien reached into its pocket and pulled out a small data pad. It relaxed back into its chair and said, bored, "All right, 'Rodimus'. So, why did you kill Professor Yubnub Mk'hungus?"

"I told you," Rodimus said, frustrated. "I've given my statement dozens of times by now. I _didn't_ kill him — I didn't _mean_ to. I was manipulated by Professor Distrail. He's a _Decepticon_. When I pressed that button I thought I'd just be, like, screwing with Professor Mk'hungus's research files, not _killing_ him. I had _no idea!_ "

"So you openly admit to engaging in academic espionage — _treason_ — and you expect me to think you're too good to kill somebody?"

"I — _treason?_ " 

"Committing an act of violence against a tenured faculty member of the University of Paramount Sciences flies in the face of everything our system stands for," the cop said. "There is no greater crime than the obstruction of an individual's right to the pursuit of knowledge."

"But — wh —"

"I'm screwing with you, I'm not that much of a blowhard," it said with a lazy grin that could scarcely be called a smile at all — the corners of its mouth still drooped heavily downwards. Rodimus didn't find any humor in the joke. "You did just admit to a treason charge, though."

Well, this wasn't a road Rodimus wanted to travel down. "I'm _innocent,_ " he insisted. 

"Okay, sure," the cop said, standing. "Back to your cell."

 _Seriously?_ "You made me wait in here for three hours to talk to me for _five minutes_ about something I've already made a statement about at least eight times?"

"You're welcome to give us what we need at any time."

Rodimus was so sick of this. "God, why are you _bothering?_ If you think you already have me for treason —"

"Because as long as you protest innocence we still have to make an appearance of investigating the murder charge and compile evidence to prosecute you in court. And that costs time and money that our department doesn't have to throw away at what is _clearly_ an open and shut case."

"Bring in Distrail! Make _him_ talk!"

The cop gave Rodimus a withering look. "Yeah, you try arresting a tenured University professor on the accusation of a murder suspect with no passport," it said. "Look, Rodimus, consider your position. We have multiple damning witness testimonies, including from Professor Cuckquean Squmpet. You're a Cybertronian illegally visiting a travel restricted Council territory —"

"I'm not here illegally," Rodimus insisted. "Distrail —"

"Just because we turn a blind eye and let the professors do whatever they want doesn't mean that what he did was _legal._ You aren't technically in the system. You're an interloper, as far as the law is concerned."

"Can't you just... _deport_ me?"

"Would that I could, but you've committed _some_ sort of crime no matter how you slice it, so good luck convincing the court to let you leave."

Rodimus had nothing else to say. He was truly and thoroughly screwed, and there was no way out of this. He was going to get melted into slag in some stupid backwoods alien planet and there was nothing he could do about it.

The cop allowed Rodimus a moment to stew before he said again, "All right, then. It's time to go back. Get up."

Rodimus got up. He followed his interrogator out into the precinct headquarters, and suffered the stares of the other officers who were watching his departure. This was a trip he'd made several times before, now.

As they returned to the entrance to access the elevator down to the basement holding cells, the two of them were stopped by an alien working at the desk.

"Is that a prisoner?" it forcefully asked after it flagged down their attention.

"Yeah," the cop said. "I'm taking him back down to holding."

"Why isn't he wearing the jumpsuit?"

"I'm… a robot," Rodimus answered.

The alien looked dryly at Rodimus over its spectacles. "Prisoners have to wear the jumpsuit."

"Robots don't wear clothes," Rodimus said.

Evidently done addressing the lowly criminal, it turned back to the cop. "If he's not wearing the jumpsuit, he could just walk out of here and no one would stop him. The public would have no way of knowing about the crimes he has committed. Prisoners have to wear the jumpsuit."

The cop sighed. "Ma'am, with all due respect, I'm sure that none of us here is likely to forget about the Cybertronian prisoners, especially if we happen to watch them casually amble out the front door."

"Prisoners have to wear the jumpsuit," the alien behind the desk repeated yet again. "Bring him up to processing and get him in the jumpsuit. He has to wear it."

"Sure hope they have something in your size," the cop dourly remarked.

They did not have anything in Rodimus's size.

Rodimus stood with three cops crowded around him in processing, each hard at work trying to devise a solution to the problem of Cybertronian bodies not being suited for cloth coverings. If only they were willing to dedicate this kind of effort to investigating crimes.

"I really don't think we're going to get any of these on him."

"Gahrudra isn't going to let it go. She'll be riding my ass for megaseconds if I don't cover this tin can in beige. You know how she is."

"I hate Gahrudra."

"Everybody hates Gahrudra."

"Maybe we could paint him…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Rodimus objected. "You are _not_ painting me beige — I'll die first. Don't think I'm joking."

"All right, well, this is my best solution," one of the aliens said, reaching up to sling the arms of a large bipedal jumpsuit around Rodimus's neck. It circled around to his back and tied the sleeves as best it could.

Rodimus sadly looked down at the floppy length of beige cloth hanging from his neck. It awkwardly dangled down to his feet, threatening to trip him if he were to walk.

"Good enough," his interrogator concluded.

Then it was finally back to the cells. The cop lead him down past Gahrudra, who thankfully appeared to accept Rodimus's humiliating new attire as sufficient marking of his criminality. Rodimus never thought he would be relieved to be back behind bars.

Ratchet looked on with concern as the cop brusquely pushed Rodimus back into the cell and set about locking the doors. He waited until they were left alone — save for the two drunks passed out in other holding cells — before he raised the obvious issue. "You look… completely ridiculous."

"I know," Rodimus said. He looked down to the cracked floor of cell in despair.

Ratchet shook his head. He reached out to pull the knot in the jumpsuit's sleeves loose and tossed it disdainfully onto the ground. "Don't let them humiliate you," he said.

Rodimus sat down on the small cot against the cell wall, and quickly discovered he lacked the energy to even stay upright. He released a shaky ventilation as he laid himself down. "I don't know what we're going to do, Ratchet."

"They'll come for us. Someone must have noticed we've been gone for too long by now... Magnus will know some legal loophole, or —"

"Or we'll run out of fuel before they get here and the aliens will melt us for scrap," Rodimus said.

Ratchet rubbed his temples anxiously. The medic was better at managing his fuel consumption than Rodimus was, but he was starting to flag all the same. It wouldn't be long before he was as broken down as Rodimus — and Rodimus wasn't far from complete shutdown.

"There has to be some Energon on this planet," Ratchet grit out, pacing restlessly behind the cell bars. "Distrail must have a source."

Rodimus's optics flickered out. His central architecture couldn't support the system any longer. It was shutting down processes one by one.

He could hear Ratchet coming to kneel down in front of him. "Here, I'll give you some of my fuel. I still have some left," Ratchet said, his voice soft. Rodimus felt the chill of Ratchet's fingers on his arm — diverted energy left the medic's normally warm metal cold. He shivered reflexively at the touch.

"Then you'll just run out even faster," Rodimus mumbled.

"Just take it. Take it and go into stasis. I'll take care of everything."

"I can't believe this is how I'm going to die. In a jail cell on an alien planet in the middle of nowhere stuck with someone who hates me —"

"I don't _hate_ you, Rodimus, and you're not going to die. Not if you take my fuel and go into stasis, like I said."

Rodimus blindly groped for Ratchet's hand; to his surprise, Ratchet didn't pull away when Rodimus found it and laced their fingers together. "Hey," Rodimus said. "If I don't make it out of here — tell Drift — tell Drift…" Ratchet tenderly squeezed his hand. "Tell him he had the sweetest aft I ever banged."

Ratchet made a disgusted noise and pulled away. "I changed my mind. I do hate you."

"I'm serious. I want him to know I'm thinking about him," Rodimus said. "You'll take care of him for me, right?"

"Don't worry about Drift right now. Take care of yourself."

"No, really — I don't think he realizes it but he gets really moody if he hasn't cummed in a few days. Someone has to see to his needs."

"Why am I even _bothering?_ " Ratchet grumbled as he pushed Rodimus down onto the bunk and forced him to expose his fuel lines. Ratchet attached his own fuel cables, and before long Rodimus felt the flow of Energon into his depleted tank. 

It was at once incredibly relieving and concerning. "Ratchet, that's too much," Rodimus complained, pawing weakly at their connection. Ratchet was quick to snatch Rodimus's hand away. 

"Don't waste your strength," Ratchet said. He disconnected the cabling shortly after. "Now rest."

"But you're going to shut d—"

Ratchet answered with exasperation. "Take stasis or I'll _make_ you, Rodimus."

Well, arguing wasn't doing him any good — and it didn't matter, anyway, because it took time for his systems to start injecting fuel and his own shutdown had already begun. Rodimus vaguely registered the sound of Ratchet crossing the cell to bang on the bars and yell for help before he shut his audio down and was plunged into sensory isolation. Before long, his consciousness followed suit.

 

***

 

Rodimus awoke to the sensation of choking. _Choking._ He was _choking._

His immediate reflex was to struggle, which was evidently the wrong decision — he felt himself being forcibly restrained from every angle, greasy hot organic digits smearing oils over his finish. As his audio processors came online, he heard the sound of shouting and panic and _Ratchet_ — he heard _Ratchet._

"Let me administer it to him," Ratchet snarled. A chain rattled. "I'm a _doctor._ "

A voice answered him angrily. "Shut up and keep still."

Rodimus felt something warm and wet on his mouth, running down his chin. _Energon._ Things were starting to become clearer, now. They were feeding him Energon. It'd become blocked in his throat. Oral fueling was definitely not the optimal method to use on an unconscious bot. He forced his optics online and his feed slowly resolved into something comprehensible.

Four different aliens were crowded around his body, sweating, fearful, gripping tightly onto his limbs. There were another two aliens in the corner, keeping Ratchet back. Was this really necessary?

"He's stopped punching," one of the aliens remarked, and the rest of them gradually began to relax, though they were clearly reluctant to release Rodimus.

Rodimus looked to Ratchet with worry. From the sagging slouch of the medic's posture, he'd obviously given Rodimus more than he really had to spare. _Idiot._

"Just let me take it myself," Rodimus sputtered. His vocalizer was choked by static. 

The aliens shared glances before they released Rodimus and stepped nervously back. He sat up slowly, so as not to startle them, and tried to get his bearings — he spotted two large Energon cubes set on the ground in the middle of the cell. They were trying to feed it to him with a coffee cup. Apparently attempting to be helpful, the alien holding the coffee cup tried to hand it to him. Rodimus waved it away. 

The group of cops watched in fascination as Rodimus rearranged his abdominal plating to expose his fuel lines. They made way for him when he stood and then knelt by the opened cube. He extended his cabling into the Energon.

 _God,_ it was a relief to feel his fuel tank fill. It was almost like he'd forgotten how it felt to _not_ be wracked by overwhelming hunger. He couldn't help but notice Ratchet looking on in envy; he gave the medic an apologetic look as he rapidly drained the cube.

If Rodimus thought he'd be allowed a chance to rest after he'd finished, he was mistaken. As soon as he locked away his equipment, he was roughly hauled to his feet, and then another alien handcuffed his hands behind his back. Rodimus begrudgingly submitted to the treatment, and allowed himself to be shoved out of the cell. He had all kinds of questions — _where did you get the Energon? Why are you giving it to me now after letting me starve for so long? Why are you moving me?_ Of course, all of them went unanswered.

When he _wasn't_ lead down the familiar path to the interrogation rooms, Rodimus became concerned. Where were they taking him? Hundreds of options ran through his processor, none of them pleasant — and he was just about bracing himself for the worst. 

Rodimus certainly wasn't expecting to be shoved into the visitor's room.

"You have a kilosecond," one of the cops said. 

Rodimus's optics practically produced a solar flare when he saw Drift on the other side of the reinforced glass, and Drift was clearly no less relieved to see him alive. He anxiously waited as one of his alien escorts unlocked his handcuffs and allowed him to take a seat on the small metal stool between a set of dividers. He reached for the antiquated audio receiver hung on the wall and brought it to his audial.

"Drift," Rodimus vented. " _Drift._ God, I'm so happy to see you."

Drift was smiling, cradling his receiver like it was something precious. "I'm really glad you're okay," he said. "You are okay, right? We brought you Energon. Did they give it to you?"

"Yeah. I mean... I'm alive," Rodimus said.

"I'm sorry it took so long for us to get here. It took Magnus three days to get the Council to let us travel to Tellectus — we heard about what happened on the news. Is it true? Did you really _murder an alien?_ "

"No! I mean —" Rodimus glanced back at the two cops left lurking behind him, listening to his every word. "No! I didn't! Drift, it was the professor Ratchet came here to see. The cops won't listen to me! You — or Magnus, or whoever they'll _listen to,_ you have to tell them! He set me and Ratchet up! He wanted to have that fleshling killed because he'd denied him funding for, for whatever — he's —"

"I know exactly who he is," Drift said, cold. "I checked up on him after you'd left. I wish I'd done it sooner."

It seemed his suspicions had been correct. "So he _is_ a Decepticon."

"He was. I remember a little about him. His alt mode is a stealth aircraft, so he performed reconnaissance for the senate before the war, but he was an early supporter of the cau— of the Decepticons. He wanted to pursue his interest in science after the Functionists fell, and Megatron supported him. I think he was working on some sort of plan to... to convert organic brains into mechanicals, and brainwash them into serving the Decepticon army."

"And he deserted?"

"It wasn't like I knew him _personally,_ " Drift said, shrugging. "I don't know why or when he left. It was definitely after I'd defected — he could've remained with them until the end, for all I know."

Rodimus rubbed his temples with his fingers. "It seems like all of this could've been prevented if we'd taken... any precaution at all before coming here."

"Magnus is trying to get you out — he's hoping that he can at least get you and Ratchet extradited, so you can stand trial under Cybertronian law."

Rodimus was initially relieved and hopeful to hear that, but the involvement of _Magnus_ gave him pause. He hoped that Magnus wouldn't _actually_ follow through and make him stand trial, but he had serious concerns that Magnus would follow the book to the point of absurdity. "Um, okay, that's good," he said — he couldn't exactly express his worries with the cops listening in, anyway.

"Time's up," a cop behind him announced, already striding forward to remove Rodimus from his stool.

Rodimus flinched away defensively, looking from Drift to the cop with the receiver clutched to his chest. "That wasn't even ten minutes! Come on, let me stay with him a little longer," Rodimus pleaded.

The cops weren't having it. The second one joined the first, and they both grabbed Rodimus by an arm to haul him up. Rodimus couldn't hear what Drift was saying to him on the other side of the divider. Drift pressed his hands to the glass and watched helplessly as the cops dragged Rodimus out of the room.

Rodimus was feeling petulant, so he allowed himself to hang limply in the cops' grasp. The two of them were visibly sweating and straining from the effort of hauling 3,500 pounds of car across the floor, and his plating was scraping up the police station tiles, but they got him into the elevator and back down to the cells eventually. 

The exasperated police officers threw Rodimus onto the floor of the cell with little compassion, but he hadn't exactly expected any after his stunt. He allowed himself to lay on the ground as the cops locked the cell door and left.

"Where did they take you?" Ratchet eventually asked, once the cops were gone.

"Drift was here to see me."

Ratchet looked up in surprise. "Are they getting us out?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Magnus wants to have me released to the Lost Light so I can go to trial under Cybertronian law instead."

Ratchet winced. "Oh. And he's not bluffing, either, is he?"

"Probably not," Rodimus said. He hadn't moved from where he lay on the floor.

"Well... it's better than standing trial here, in any case."

It was a weak assurance, but Rodimus supposed he appreciated the thought anyway. There wasn't much else to do but sit and wait.

While Rodimus prepared himself for an excruciating wait, it was actually not long before he heard the footfalls of another approaching officer. He pulled himself up to sit and look — it was the officer who "interrogated" him earlier. Rodimus put on a sour face.

Without saying anything, the alien cop unlocked the door to the cell and pulled it open; Ratchet and Rodimus both stared at the officer suspiciously. 

Ratchet was the first to break the tense silence. "What?"

The officer gestured at Ratchet to come over. "C'mon, you made bail," it said, making a point to sound bored. 

Rodimus's spark surged with elated relief. He scrambled to his feet as Ratchet rose, far more suspicious. "Oh, thank —"

"Not _you,_ " the alien said, holding a hand up to turn Rodimus away. "Just your friend here."

Well, that was some long lived positivity. Rodimus's mood dropped like a stone. "What? Why aren't they bailing _me_ out?"

The officer looked at Rodimus like he was stupid. "You're a murder suspect. We only have your friend here on conspiracy," it explained, condescendingly, as if everyone ought to be abreast on the nuances of alien law. "He gets bail, you don't."

Rodimus would've considered trying to make a break for it if it weren't for the comically huge gun in the cop's other hand. They may have been aliens, but their weapons were certainly big enough to stop him in his tracks. Instead, he sat back down on the ground. "Ratchet, don't leave me here alone," Rodimus pleaded.

Ratchet froze where he stood, looking down at Rodimus with a pained expression. His mouth opened and closed before he finally decided, "We'll get you out, I promise."

In a pathetic spectacle, Rodimus crawled on his hands and knees towards Ratchet and the increasingly perturbed cop. "Oh god, don't leave me, it's been bad enough already but if I'm stuck here _alone_ then I —"

"That's enough," the alien said, roughly hauling Ratchet out of the cell. It quickly shut and locked the door behind itself before Rodimus made it to the bars.

Banging on them didn't do much; trying to pry them apart was even less fruitful. They were made of some kind of ridiculously reinforced material. Maybe he could've blasted the cell open, but the aliens at least knew enough to disarm his weaponry before imprisoning him. 

Rodimus slid back to the ground, to which he felt increasingly drawn as of late. If how utterly and thoroughly screwed he was hadn't already been clear, it sure was now.

 

***

 

No one came to see Rodimus for an entire day.

At least, that's what it felt like — he had no external frame of reference to be sure, and his internal chronometers had become completely out of whack since the messy fuel-deprived shutdown he had when he first got thrown in this cell. All he could do was sit on his bunk, or on the ground, or stand and stare out the bars at the patrol of whichever hideous beast was on guard duty that hour. 

The impotent frustration got to be unbearable and Rodimus threw a tantrum. He flipped the sad thin mattress off his cot, rolled on the ground, and tore at whatever his hands could find — which happened to be the ugly beige jumpsuit that had been forced upon him the day before. It was a worthy target of his rage. The guard came over when he started making noise and simply left when the display proved to not be worth its time.

It was only after a prolonged period of frustrated pulling and tearing that Rodimus realized that the jumpsuit would not break no matter how hard he pulled. This was evidently not any ordinary cloth material; he tried catching it on some of his sharper bits with no luck. Nothing would pierce or break the weave.

He stopped, looked to the cell door, and considered the implications. Maybe, just maybe, if he tied the jumpsuit to his bumper and the cell door he could use his alt mode to rip it off the hinges and get out.

Rodimus couldn't stand another second in that cell, so he entirely skipped the risk evaluation process and scrambled to locate his own rear bumper. He finagled a bit of partial transformation to get a sleeve around the part and tied it tight, and then did the same to the cell door with the jumpsuit's leg. Switching to his alt mode with the sleeve tied on was a bit of an ordeal, but extensive reconfiguration didn't break it either and he had enough slack to gun it. It was just a matter of starting his engines and — 

"What are you _doing?_ " 

The voice of the officer startled him into a skid. Rodimus recognized it not as the regular guard, but the cop who interrogated him, who was evidently back again. He wished he'd bothered to come up with an excuse before trying this plan.

"I... um." Rodimus transformed, and ended up with the length of cloth trapped under his convoluted plating reconfiguration. "I was," Rodimus started, staring down at the tangled length of unbreakable cloth connecting his body with the bars of the cell door. "I was exercising."

"Exercising," the cop repeated.

"Yes... um... there's not a lot of space here, and I noticed that this jumpsuit wouldn't tear, so I though I could tie it to my bumper and, uh, just sort of spin my wheels in place for a bit — I wasn't trying to —"

The alien dragged its hand down its face. "Look, I don't care. I'm here to tell you that all of the charges against you have just been dropped, so you're free to go."

That certainly was not what Rodimus was expecting to hear. His mouth fell open. "Wait, what? Why?"

"It's your lucky day. Looks like that professor you've been dragging through the mud came and made a full confession after all," it explained, slowly moving to unlock the cell. "He made it on the condition that you and your friend be let go. The prosecutor agreed. I guess the chance to hang a professor was too good to pass up."

"Oh, that's... that's great?" Part of him was still afraid it was some sort of trick. But when he stepped through the cell door, unencumbered, nothing happened. 

"Sure. You have 100 kiloseconds to leave the planet before we assume the right to execute you, though."

"Haha, okay. That won't be a problem. Believe me, I am _never_ coming back here again," Rodimus laughed, beset by a sudden surge of giddy energy. "Actually, wait, before I go. Can you help me get this rag out of my body? It's just, it's a little tangled up in my parts —"

The alien furrowed its strange face and reached out to give the limp dangling edge of the jumpsuit a tug. Unsurprisingly, it did not move an inch. "Try transforming?" it suggested.

That only made it worse; it tangled even deeper into his chassis. "Uh, it's tied to my back end. Could you untie that?"

The cop moved around Rodimus and bent down to loosen the knot around the car's bumper. It gave the jumpsuit another pull, but it was similarly stuck. "Well, I untied it," it said, after giving up.

Rodimus tried transforming again. This had even worse results. "Ugh, it's completely trapped inside. You can't even see it anymore," Rodimus lamented, running his hands all over his body in a desperate search for any hint of the rag. "But I can _feel_ it in there!"

"Well, you're going to have to deal with that on your own," the cop concluded. "Come on, I'll walk you out."

Rodimus tried to skip on the way out, but one of his pistons got caught on the jumpsuit and he fell flat on his face.

 

***

 

Rodimus had never been more happy to see Ultra Magnus in his life. When he got a glimpse of that big doddering oaf in the precinct lobby, his spark nearly shot out of his chest. "Mags!" he exclaimed, before making a full on dash to fling himself at Magnus's torso.

Ultra Magnus watched Rodimus's approach as if he were a radioactive disease vector, and very swiftly created a comfortable margin of space between them following the painful _clang_ of Rodimus's attempt at a hug. "Rodimus," he sternly intoned. He did not require any other words to communicate his immeasurable displeasure with what had just transpired.

Rodimus ignored it. "Hey man!" he beamed, slapping Magnus jovially on the arm. Magnus recoiled from the contact like a gunshot wound. "Wow, never thought I'd say this, but I really missed your bright and smiling face! Now let's _please_ get out of here." 

Magnus stared down at Rodimus with a look that was as disgruntled as Rodimus's smile was immensely radiant and sparkling, but he didn't deign to deliver the harsh rebuke that he no doubt had in store. "Yes. Let's return to the shuttle."

They were able to make it back to the airport without issue, despite the deeply ingrained specter of paranoia Rodimus couldn't seem to escape. He was jumpy as all hell, seeing cops out of the corner of his eye every minute. He still didn't fully believe that he was _out._ What if it was another trick? Rodimus had had _enough_ of being tricked.

All the same, they weren't stopped, and they weren't arrested, and nobody dropped out of the sky to blow them to smithereens for treason. The only ones who were waiting for them back on the shuttle were Ratchet and Drift.

As Magnus went to prepare for takeoff, Drift informed Rodimus that they needed to talk and lead him out of the cabin to the small cargo hold at the back of the shuttle. Rodimus was more than a little surprised when Drift had him up against the wall the moment the doors slid shut behind them.

The ferocity with which Drift had begun to kiss him would have been appreciated if it had been _not in the back of a tiny shuttle being piloted by Ultra Magnus._ "Whoa, whoa," Rodimus objected, as he had to practically wrestle Drift off of his face.

Drift had little concern for Rodimus's reservations. "Frag me," he begged, reaching for lower areas — Rodimus felt like he'd needed four arms to keep Drift off of him.

"Uh, Drift, sweetspark, you realize that the _one guy_ we care about not knowing about us is _a foot away,_ " Rodimus said, keeping his voice down to a whisper.

Drift was stubborn. "I don't care," he insisted. "I missed you —"

Rodimus tried his best not to laugh too loud. "Haha, oh my god, have you seriously gotten this stick hungry after like a _week_ without me?"

"I was worried you were going to die," Drift said. "I should have gone with you — I wouldn't have let them take you — ugh, just —" 

Rodimus had to lift his hand up and cover Drift's mouth to block his next sloppy attempt at a kiss. "Look. I know I'm reckless, and maybe a little stupid sometimes, but not enough to bang you within hearing range of Super Hatesfun."

Drift just looked frustrated when Rodimus let go. "I can be quiet."

" _I_ can't," Rodimus laughed. "Chill, babe. I _promise_ you, the moment we get back to my quarters I'll ride you so hard your suspension's gonna snap like a banged up junker on the bottom of a trash heap."

"Really?" Drift's optics brightened. "You want to?"

"Really," Rodimus said, grinning like a jerk. He slipped an arm around Drift's waist and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Just hold out, like, the hour it's going to take to get out of here. Also, however long it takes Ratchet to remove the the unbreakable alien jumpsuit I have stuck in my chassis."

"Er, the — the what?"

"Look, it's a long and dumb story, I'll tell you la—"

Drift had to catch Rodimus when he stumbled during Magnus's unannounced and no doubt intentionally sudden takeoff. Rodimus started to laugh, but his amusement died in his throat when he looked up into Drift's face, and the way Drift smiled, with his intense and shining eyes. Rodimus didn't know why it shook him so, but it did — he had to tear his gaze away as if he'd just looked into the sun. He tried to act as naturally as possible when he disentangled himself from Drift's arms.

"Let's go mingle with the grumps," Rodimus suggested, and then very quickly left to do so. Drift trailed behind.

Magnus was sat at the shuttle controls, listening intently to direction from space traffic control, while Ratchet had taken a seat by the wall of the small cabin. He looked far away.

"'Sup, Ratch," Rodimus said, bouncing up to the recalcitrant medic with no concern for his somber mood. Ratchet seemed to sour even further at Rodimus's sunny disposition and use of deplorable nicknames.

"Hello," Ratchet replied, dry.

Rodimus sat next to Ratchet; Drift looked unsure for a moment, but eventually decided to sit across from them on the other side of the shuttle. "So how the _hell_ did you get me out of there?"

"Distrail confessed," Ratchet said. He was looking at his hands. 

"Yeah, the cops told me that — but why? Why did he go through all the trouble to set us up and then just back out?"

"I tracked him down and I threatened him — he had no idea what was going on at all," Drift answered.

"It was the girl. The AI. When she told us to change the plan, she was working on her own," Ratchet said. "Distrail was a Decepticon. She was trying to protect him from us — from _Autobots._ She thought she could save his career and stomp out the threat we posed in one shot — kill Yubnub, and put us in jail for it." 

Rodimus screwed up his face. This didn't make any sense. "What? Then why would he confess to the crime? They're going to terminate him!"

Ratchet tiredly rubbed his temples, as if _he_ ought to be the exhausted one right now. "Because if he didn't confess, the investigation into you was going to come back to Dejitomo eventually. She was sloppy."

"So? Good!" Rodimus exclaimed, incredulous. "If that thing was responsible, it should be the one to go to jail. Why would you _die_ for something you didn't even do? To protect a _murderer?_ "

Drift looked at Rodimus carefully before he replied. "... It's not something that you would understand." 

"Yeah," Ratchet agreed. 

Rodimus didn't think he wanted to.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhh... kind of... non-con warning? You will probably be disappointed coming to this with a rape kink, but somebody explicitly says stop and means it and doesn't get listened to. Now you know!!!

Rodimus couldn't sleep at night.

It was to be expected, really. His systems were kinda out of whack from nearly dying, and he supposed it was a little bit traumatizing. Rodimus had certainly been in worse situations over the course of his life, but there was something strange about the way removing the context of war made everything feel just a bit more real.

What wasn't so easy to deal with was past Rodimus's lazy decision to restock his own personal supply of engex _after_ he got back from his little trip, a fact that present Rodimus only recalled when he made a late night search for a little sleep mode panacea and discovered that his booze coffers had run completely dry.

Being captain had its privileges, though. Instead of reattempting a natural shutdown, he pulled himself off his berth as quietly as he could manage — so as not to wake Drift, who had the most aggravatingly low-set alert threshold imaginable — and snuck out into the hall. They were deserted this time of night, and no one stopped him on his leisurely walk down to Swerve's bar.

It was a simple matter of inputting his own override code to open up the locked bar, and he stepped inside without obstruction. However, the sudden sound of glass shattering startled Rodimus into an undignified jump, and a little yelp that he _hoped_ was just the product of his own imagination.

"Ratchet!" Rodimus called out, his hand clutched over his spark. "What are you _doing_ in here?"

Ratchet didn't seem any less surprised to be confronted. He was stood behind the bar, his hands were held up in the air defensively, though he kept glancing down at his feet to what Rodimus presumed was the resting place of the shattered glass. "I — wh — what are _you_ doing here!? It's — it's the middle of the night —"

Rodimus stepped inside and allowed the doors to shut behind him so as not to draw any more unwanted company. "Uh, I came here to steal booze, which I'm guessing is exactly what you're doing right now."

Ratchet allowed his posture to slump. "Well... yeah," he admitted, face twisted into a begrudgingly guilty scowl, and bent down to set about cleaning up the mess he'd just made.

Shaking his head, Rodimus made his way across the room to lean over the bar and peer down at Ratchet. The medic was on his hands and knees, picking tiny pieces of glass up off the floor. "Hey," Rodimus said, grinning at the dour look Ratchet immediately shot up at him. "Once you're finished with that, whip me up a cocktail, will you?"

Ratchet snorted derisively, "Do it yourself." He stood up, and dumped his handful of glass into a wastebin.

Rodimus shrugged, and took that as permission to hop the bar himself, rudely shoulder Ratchet out of the way, and do just as he was told.

The process of producing his favorite drink was laborious, largely due to the fact Rodimus actually had no idea where anything was kept behind the bar — and Swerve seemed to disdain accurate labeling. Half of everything was unlabeled, and the other half was _mis_ labeled, which in effect meant that Rodimus had to make do with tasting his way to a satisfactory concoction. Ratchet glowered darkly at Rodimus for the entire duration.

When Rodimus finally moved back out of the way, it took about five seconds for Ratchet to prepare his own drink. He found a glass, and put it under an engex tap. Done.

Ratchet made his way to a table to sit with his drink, and Rodimus invited himself to follow along.

The lights were left dimmed, and there was little to illuminate the bar but the faint glow of the engex tanks in the back. Ratchet sat quietly, and Rodimus sat quietly across from him, and they worked on their drinks in a silence that verged on _companionable._

Surprisingly, Ratchet was the first to break it. "Having trouble sleeping?" he asked, a tone of practiced indifference to his voice — he traced the rim of his glass with a finger over and over again, optics carefully trained away from Rodimus.

"A little," Rodimus answered. "You too?"

"A little," Ratchet echoed.

"Yeah."

Silence. Rodimus took a drink.

"Sorry for getting us into that mess," Ratchet mumbled. He actually looked up to Rodimus this time, but his optics were dim. "I never thought..."

"I thought I was gonna die," Rodimus blurted out, and discovered once it was out of his mouth that it was true. "I never really think I'm gonna die, you know? Even when I've got a Con gun to my head and nothing to my name but a prayer I never really feel like I'm gonna die. I always know I'm gonna pull through, even when every odd is against me. _Especially_ then."

"I should've died millions of years ago," Ratchet breathed. "I don't know how I haven't."

"I dunno what it was about this time — maybe it was just that _cell_. There's no dignity to that kind of death. It felt like... like the rules had changed. Like I wasn't a hero anymore. Things felt... _real,_ for once."

"It's always real to me."

Rodimus laughed. "But how many more brushups have you been in than I have? You live this long, you've gotta feel pretty immortal."

"No," Ratchet said. "Just... lucky." He took a small sip of his drink, and turned his eyes to stare into a dark corner of the room. Rodimus traced his gaze and found nothing. "I've watched much better bots than me die — or worse — of _stupid_ things, for _stupid_ reasons, with no justice or poetry to ease the passing. I live every day knowing I could die." 

"Then what's got you so down now? I know you're not the snappiest guy in town on a good day, but something must have you beat enough you're nicking liquor from _Swerve._ "

Ratchet shook his head. "I guess it's just — everything I do these days just reminds me of every mistake I made at Delphi. I always seem to have a _burden of the century._ "

" _Delphi?_ " Rodimus said. "I mean, I wasn't there, but from what I heard from Drift, you kinda cleaned house." 

"I don't know, maybe I could've..." Ratchet trailed off. "I know that there were things I could've done to stop it from even _happening._ If I had been there — if I'd just kept in _touch_ —"

"Man, that sounds like some pointless stuff to dwell on."

Ratchet looked up from his drink with empty optics. "We agreed we were going to become _conjunx_ 'after the war's over'. It was just a joke between us — _the war was never gonna end._ But it did, and I was going to ask him for real." 

Warning sirens started going off in Rodimus's head. Suddenly, the urge to flee the premises verged on overwhelming. How was he supposed to _respond_ to that? Did Ratchet want to cry on his shoulder? If Ratchet started _crying_ Rodimus was going to shoot himself in the face. "I —" Rodimus's mouth opened and closed. "I'm... sorry to hear that, buddy."

Ratchet gave Rodimus a few seconds' worth of a blank look before he returned to staring down at his drink.

_Wow, awkward._

In an effort to move things out of _that_ miserable dead zone, Rodimus raised what he thought was a nice suggestion. "Hey," he started, upbeat. "Since we both can't sleep, why don't we get out of here and do something fun? We can tire each other out."

Ratchet groaned audibly. "Seriously, Rodimus?"

"Huh, wha— _oh,_ haha, yeah I guess that sounded like — actually, I was thinking more like we could race or someth—" Wait, maybe now _was_ a great time to go for it? "Actually, yeah, now that I think about it, fragging would work too."

"Rodimus..."

"Come on. It'll be fun," Rodimus insisted. "You spend all of your time saving people's lives. You can't tell me that you've never felt like you wanted to just..." He clenched a fist. " _Destroy_ somebody."

Ratchet stared at Rodimus, tense and wordless. Rodimus took it as encouragement; he leaned in a little closer, and with a dark grin, said, "I piss you off, yeah? Come and _shut my mouth._ "

"Fine," Ratchet sighed, voice heavy with defeat, like a proud old warrior who'd finally succumbed to an honorless battle of attrition. It was kind of a bummer, honestly. 

For all his posturing, Rodimus wasn't actually expecting that to _work._ "Wait — seriously?"

"I can't believe I'm... ugh. _Once,_ maybe. But only once."

Rodimus wasn't sure whether to believe it. "You're not just screwing with me?"

"Maybe I've just had too much to drink —"

"What? No, no, you've just had a glass. It's fine. We should definitely do it. Like, frag. It's fine."

Ratchet rubbed his forehead. "It's been so long. I haven't touched anyone since — since _Pharma_ — Sometimes I get... I don't know. I'm old and tired."

 _Slag._ Things were moving back into no man's land, and Rodimus was keen on getting it back on track as quickly as possible. "Seems like you've, uh, got some... some feelings there, Ratchet," Rodimus observed. "Not sure this is really my wheelhouse? I dunno, I'm extremely young and full of zest for life, so —"

" _Primus,_ " Ratchet cursed, his superlative exasperation far eclipsing his religious principles. He downed the last of his drink, slammed the glass back on the table and rose to leave without so much as an explanation.

Rodimus hurriedly scrambled to his feet and followed after Ratchet. "Where are you going?" 

"The medibay," Ratchet gruffly answered. He was moving just fast enough that Rodimus was having trouble keeping up without having to break into a half-run.

"To do what?"

Ratchet didn't answer — or tell him to leave — so Rodimus doggedly pursued the medic through the halls until they arrived at their destination. Ratchet didn't slow down a bit after blowing through the medibay doors, nor did he pay the startled Ambulon any heed; Rodimus chased Ratchet right into the operating room.

"Come here," Ratchet commanded.

Rodimus's energon ran a little cold. He glanced back at the doors behind him, now locked; when he looked back forward, there was a peculiar simmer in Ratchet's optics that he didn't think he'd ever seen before. He liked it. 

Rodimus slowly took a step forward, and then another, until he was standing just in front of Ratchet — he wasn't sure whether the invitation extended into Ratchet's personal space.

When the seconds ticked uncomfortably by without any action on Ratchet's part, Rodimus got impatient, crossed the line and press an exploratory kiss to Ratchet's lips. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the wrong response — in an instant Ratchet tore away, and had Rodimus held away in a crushing grip.

"What, you don't like to kiss?" Rodimus awkwardly asked, squirming uncomfortably under the pressure from Ratchet's hands.

Ratchet looked frustrated and more than a little conflicted about this entire ordeal. "I don't want to kiss _you,_ " he spat. It occurred to him to release Rodimus, which was a relief. "I'm not going to have that sort of relationship with you. This is strictly a one time deal."

"Haha, what?" Rodimus laughed. He looked at Ratchet like he was being ridiculous. "Kissing feels good and I like doing it. It doesn't mean we have to _sparkbond._ It's just a physical thing."

"Yeah, not for me, kid."

Rodimus rolled his optics. Way to get worked up over nothing. "Well, if you're worried about me getting the wrong idea, I'm not. I don't want to be your _conjunx._ I just want to jam my tongue in your mouth while you split me open with your huge —"

"Too bad," Ratchet forcefully cut him off. It appeared he was unmoved by sleazy dirty talk.

"I dunno what your deal is. I kiss Drift all the time and it doesn't mean anything."

Ratchet affixed Rodimus with a critical, withering look. He opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it halfway through — after a moment of deliberation, he settled on biting rhetoric instead. "Is this how you react every time anybody tells you no? You throw an enormous tantrum until you finally get what you want?"

"Maybe. If it works."

"Just _shut up,_ " Ratchet growled.

Rodimus grinned, but Ratchet was quick to wipe the smirk off his face. Rodimus barely knew what had hit him when Ratchet roughly grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him over and shoved him face down over the operating table.

The switch came as a surprise, but his body had no trouble processing the sudden stimulus; his panel snapped open involuntarily the moment his chest made painful contact with the metal of the table. " _Ratchet,_ " Rodimus gasped, reflexively pushing back to spread his legs.

Ratchet disdainfully clicked his tongue, a palm spread over Rodimus's back to hold him down — not that he was offering any resistance. "That's all it takes," Ratchet observed.

If Ratchet thought deriding Rodimus's eagerness was going to do anything to deter it, he was severely mistaken. Rodimus simply produced an exaggerated moan and shoved his aft directly up against Ratchet's crotch. "Mmn, Ratchet, I want you so bad," Rodimus whimpered, milking it for all it was worth. " _Give it to me._ "

From the stiffening of his posture and disgruntled noises he produced, Ratchet was evidently not entirely responsible for his spike's rapid pressurization. "We both know we're hot," Rodimus laughed. "No point in playing hard to get."

Evidently concluding that he may as well just get on with it, Ratchet released his panel, grasped his spike in his hand and pressed the head against Rodimus's valve. It was astounding how he managed to make even this seem like a begrudging action; Rodimus could hear him muttering something acrid under his breath. Rodimus laughed.

That seemed to be enough encouragement — Rodimus's sniggers cracked into a yelp when Ratchet abruptly snapped his hips. They were going off no prep, and Rodimus hadn't had very much time to get properly wet, but it wasn't exactly like Rodimus had the freshest set of tubing in the world; he'd taken bigger spikes with less. Ratchet wasn't able to make it very deep on the first stroke, but he thrust again and again with enough force that he probably would've eventually gotten up in there even if Rodimus's valve had been protected by a 6 foot wall of titanium. The friction burned a little, but Rodimus liked it rough, and it wasn't long until he was lubed enough for Ratchet to slide into him effortlessly.

But Rodimus had honestly been expecting more than this. Sure, Ratchet _was_ packing some respectable pipe, and being filled and drilled felt _good,_ but — eh. Maybe it was just his own fault for hyping up the encounter so much. There really wasn't much chance that anything could've lived up to all those weeks of fantasy and desperate wheedling, when it really came down to it. Oh well.

May as well just enjoy it for what it was. Rodimus spread his legs further, pushed back and let Ratchet take him deeper; Ratchet had built a steady rhythm to his hard, bruising strokes, and it was easy to relax into the building pleasure. Ratchet knew where to aim and how to give it to him rough enough that he'd feel it, and his fingers dug into Rodimus's hips in all the right places. This wasn't _bad,_ by any means. He'd sure as hell get off — and the edge was nearing quickly.

And then it was over. Ratchet gave a last strong thrust, venting hard, and spilled himself inside of Rodimus's valve. He pulled out as soon as he was finished, and Rodimus eventually realized he had no intention of putting anything back in. _Seriously?_

"I didn't finish, you know," Rodimus said, rolling onto his back. He'd gotten _so close,_ and his array felt like it was humming as it gradually receded from the edge. The dull ache of denial seeped into the machinery of his valve. The sensation of Ratchet's fluids dripping out of him might have been pleasant if it didn't stand as such an agonizing reminder of his emptiness.

"Oh. Didn't you?" Ratchet asked. Rodimus couldn't tell if he was playing dumb, or if he honestly hadn't realized. 

When Ratchet made a show of snapping his panel closed and setting about tidying up, it became clear that he _must_ have been screwing with Rodimus. Frustrated, Rodimus sat up; he could finish himself off, but he'd really rather have a spike in his valve as he came — he'd settle for a tongue if that was all he could get. "Come back over here," he demanded.

Ratchet insisted on being difficult; he stepped in closer, but made no move to _do_ anything. Rodimus spread his legs angrily and pointed to his crotch. "Look at this!"

Ratchet looked at it. "What about it?"

"You need to _get it off._ "

"I'm not so young anymore, _captain,_ " Ratchet said. _This cheap glitch was_ mocking _him now!_ "It'll be a while before I can get it up again."

"Then eat me out, idiot." Rodimus reached down and crudely spread himself, fluid running from his stretched valve. As if that weren't clear enough, he jabbed in its direction with the finger of his other hand. "Get in there, buddy." 

Rodimus was worried that Ratchet intended to prolong the already tortuous stint of feigned ignorance, but the medic thankfully gave in. Ratchet rolled his optics, grabbed the OR's stool, sat down and pulled Rodimus by the hips into his face.

Even in this Ratchet seemed determined to tease. He licked around the edges of Rodimus's valve, catching the dripping fluids on his tongue — and when he parted the folds and pushed the tip inside, his movements were gentle and shallow. He didn't seem to be doing much of anything other than cleaning up his own mess. Rodimus harshly planted a hand on the back of Ratchet's head and forced him up to where he wanted.

Ratchet relented to the stern direction. He kissed at the pulsing node with wet lips and sucked hard, eliciting a well-earned gasp. Rodimus rocked up into Ratchet's mouth as the medic licked long strokes up the length of his valve, controlled but forceful and quick. Ratchet was certainly making up for leaving him high and dry.

Rodimus clenched down reflexively when Ratchet went straight to three fingers in the valve. He pushed inside of Rodimus easily, and spread out and stroked deep and touched Rodimus in places he didn't even know he _had._ How the hell was Ratchet even _doing_ that with his hands? His valve felt like it was being filled to capacity but he never felt Ratchet put anything else in. He was pulling some crazy moves that Rodimus couldn't even _describe,_ other than through a string of senseless profanity and a crushing grip on Ratchet's skull.

When Ratchet reached up to wrap his other hand around Rodimus's neglected spike, Rodimus could barely handle it. Ratchet had hardly been down there any time at all and he was already coming back to a peak, this one much more intense and urgent than the last. Rodimus bit down on the knuckle of his hand as Ratchet drove fingers in hard and pumped his spike and unrelentingly licked and sucked at the top of his valve until the charge crested and — 

_And then Ratchet stopped again._

"Ratchet," Rodimus gasped, writhing on the operating table. His array was _crackling_ — even _half_ a second longer and he would've overloaded. "What are you _doing_ to me?"

"Nothing, yet," Ratchet said, and left him again to drag over a machine from the corner of the room.

"Stop it. I just want to get off. Just — just let me come."

Rodimus warily watched Ratchet turn on the machine — he hadn't the slightest clue what the thing was for. From the screen, he guessed some sort of monitor. "Do it yourself, then," Ratchet said, not bothering to look back.

But Rodimus didn't _want_ to do it himself. He'd feel... _ripped off_ if he had to come away from this with a self-induced overload. What was the point of any of this if Ratchet wasn't going to get him off? He clenched his fists and pressed his thighs together and just hoped he didn't _explode._

And Ratchet knew that. When he finished fiddling with the settings on the machine and hooking up wires, he went over to the supplies cabinet and procured a set of what Rodimus could very readily identify as part of a set of slab restraints.

"Turn over," Ratchet commanded.

Well, all right. Rodimus sighed, turned over onto his abdomen and volunteered his hands behind his back. Ratchet affixed a restraint to each wrist, and used the ties to bind them to each other. The straps of the cuffs were meant to tie around a medical slab, so the excess length pooled uncomfortably on his lower back. Rodimus tested the bindings — Ratchet was evidently practiced at tying chains in knots. They weren't meant to be used this way, but they got the job done.

Instead of just sticking it in, like Rodimus expected, Ratchet turned him over onto his back again. With his arms shackled, it _sucked._ Rodimus immediately tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position, but Ratchet forced him to stay still. Without explanation, Ratchet reached over to the machine he'd prepared and its connected set of long, thin wires. He stripped the sterile coverings from the connectors at the ends of the wires and and... started attaching them to Rodimus's spike!? _What the hell?_

"Wh— what are you _doing?_ " Rodimus demanded. He did _not_ want some unidentified torture device attached to his god damn array. He could feel something like a faint current from the wires and it was an unbelievably uncomfortable sensation.

Ratchet just ignored him. He was slow and methodical in locating all the proper places for the wires to attach. He connected the last of the cables to Rodimus's exterior node and the peripherals of his valve, and a quiet, irregular beeping began to sound from the machine; it seemed like the intervals were growing longer. 

Between the pain in his arms and the droning beeps and the nerve-wracking horror of the unknown, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Ratchet detached a small object from a dock in the machine, and experimentally turned its dial; Rodimus could feel _something_ in his array, but he had no idea what it was, and the change was slight. When he was satisfied with the results, Ratchet twisted back to flip a switch on the machine, and cables seemed to magnetize — which was startling, to say the least. Ratchet tugged on the connections to ensure they were secure.

Rodimus was going to have an oil spill.

"Oh my god, at least explain what you're doing to me," Rodimus said. He was getting seriously nervous about this. The current in his array tingled and made him shiver from revulsion. It was just one of those indescribably uncomfortable sensations — not _painful_ to experience, but _unpleasant,_ like the shrill scraping sound of sharp metal again metal, or a texture that didn't feel quite right...

Instead of an explanation, though, Rodimus got a rough grip around his arm. Ratchet hauled Rodimus to his feet, allowed him one fleeting moment of anxious anticipation, and then flung his body to the ground like a heap of trash.

Rodimus shouted out in surprise and pain. He landed hard on one of his elbows, knocking the joint out of alignment — but unfortunately not any of the uncomfortable wires. Warnings sparked across his optics as he tried to focus on Ratchet, who towered above him with a pressurized spike and a glint in his eye. Rodimus felt heat flood to his array. 

Ratchet descended upon him immediately. He brusquely spread Rodimus's legs apart and back, and forced his way between them, and slammed inside of Rodimus's spasming valve without warning. Rodimus bit his tongue in his shock, but Ratchet didn't afford him time to acclimate; he was already driving himself into Rodimus mercilessly hard.

 _Clearly,_ Ratchet had been holding back before. Even though his restrained arms dug painfully into his back, even though his joints screamed from being bent in ways they were not meant to be bent, and even though the sharp points of his knees were stabbing into his shoulders and raking scratchy lines off paint from his finish, Rodimus barely noticed. However much his body protested the positioning, it exposed himself to all the punishment Ratchet had to offer — with his legs braced over Ratchet's shoulders, his bound arms forced the angle of his hips even further up, and Ratchet could bury his full length into Rodimus's body with every forceful thrust. This was _exactly_ the kind of beating Rodimus was pining for. 

The terror of the mystery wires may as well have been a distant memory. Rodimus was so wet he was just spilling out around the edges of Ratchet's spike, which slid into him practically without friction and yet set his calipers burning with strain all the same. Any reservations Rodimus might've had about the adequacy of Ratchet's size were long gone — this was _perfect._ "Oh _god,_ Ratchet, yes," Rodimus gasped out, functionally incoherent. "Ah, _frag,_ mmn, Ratchet, I'm — I'm —"

But he _wasn't._

Ratchet was hammering him relentlessly, and Rodimus could feel the head strike his ceiling node over and over and over so fast the sensation blurred together into a single stream of amazing, painful, blinding pleasure and he was _there,_ he _should_ be overloading but he _wasn't_ and no matter how hard he begged it wouldn't come.

 _That's_ what the wires were for. When he remembered them, the shrill sound of the machine's now frenzied beeping broke through to his audials.

Oh, _god._ Rodimus was _crying._ He was honestly, seriously _crying._ He felt so overwhelmed and powerless and he just wanted to _get off,_ but however close Ratchet brought him was never enough. His entire body was shaking, and he felt perpetually on the edge of collapse — each moment seemed like it would be the last before he just up and _died._

He barely noticed when Ratchet came inside of him again. Ratchet wasn't loud when he overloaded, but he pulled out as soon as he was finished. 

Rodimus choked as he clenched his trembling thighs together and rolled onto his front. He was almost surprised to be greeted by the _absence_ of searing pain, once he'd taken his weight off his bound arms.

"Ratchet," he begged, senseless and blind and writhing on the ground. "Ratchet. Ratchet. _Please_."

"Please what?" Ratchet asked, disinterested.

"Let me — let me overload," Rodimus gasped out. He struggled to twist himself to look up at Ratchet while he was laid out on his abdomen. "Just take this stuff off — please, I'll do it myself, I need to — so badly — Ratchet —"

Ratchet moved to pick up the remote he'd placed aside, took a seat in the chair left by the counters and flicked the dial. "It's off," he said.

Rodimus whimpered in relief, but swiftly realized what a fat load of good that did him while his arms were tied behind his back. He rolled around on the ground, rubbed his thighs together, tried to thrust his spike against the floor — that wasn't going to do it. "Ratchet," Rodimus whined.

"What?"

"Help me —"

"I thought you were going to do it yourself."

Rodimus felt like he was going to start crying again. He'd spent more time bawling tonight than any other day in his life, probably. It was unbelievably humiliating, but he wanted to come so badly that nothing else really mattered. "I can't... I can't — Ratchet, please, frag me, or untie me, or anything, _please._ "

Ratchet sounded so _bored._ "Do you want my spike?"

" _God,_ yes, please, _yes_ —"

"Come here," Ratchet commanded yet again.

Shakily, Rodimus pulled himself up to sit. Ratchet was only a few paces away, but unstable as Rodimus was, crossing that distance was easier said than done. He was _exhausted_ and every part of him hurt. He uncomfortably shuffled forwards on his knees, his body threatening to topple over at any moment. The wires on his array pulled taut, and he had to twist himself and use the force of his body to pull the machine along after him — thank Primus it was on wheels. It felt like a miracle when he finally made it to slump against the chair between Ratchet's spread thighs.

There was no way Rodimus was going to be able to climb into Ratchet's lap without help. He looked up at Ratchet in desperation, and received a smirk in return. 

"If you want it, then convince my body it's worth my time to give it to you," Ratchet said.

Rodimus looked to Ratchet's closed interface panels, and found himself in a predicament. His arms were still tied behind his back, so he couldn't activate Ratchet's manual release, and Ratchet evidently wasn't going to just open up and whip it out himself. He stared at Ratchet's crotch as one might a particularly daunting puzzle. "Ah... I don't have any _hands,_ I can't..."

"Get creative."

Oh, god. What did Ratchet expect from him? Did he want Rodimus to do a sexy dance? He couldn't even _stand,_ let alone ambulate in an arousing fashion.

Knelt at Ratchet's feet, he did the only thing that even came to mind — he leaned forward, pressed the breadth of his tongue against Ratchet's spike panel and licked. He might not be able to pull off seductive, but shamelessly wanton, he could do.

It didn't have the immediate result that Rodimus was hoping for. He felt Ratchet tense beneath him, and warmth rise in the array, but it stayed _shut._ He tried again, and again — frustrated, he shifted down to see if he might have better luck there, instead. Either spike or valve would do, honestly — Rodimus just wanted something in his mouth already. He kissed the heated plating of Ratchet's valve and ran his tongue along the seams, but that didn't even get so much as a _response._ Ratchet still wouldn't expose the goods. 

"Ratchet," Rodimus whined, pitiful. He pressed his cheek against Ratchet's thigh as he looked up with plaintive, pleading eyes.

Ratchet was not so easily swayed.

His next idea was problematic to execute without the use of his own hands, but he took the shot anyway. He lifted himself up on his knees and artlessly leaned in the direction of where Ratchet's hand sat on the armrest of the chair — actually getting Ratchet's fingers into his mouth was an ordeal. Ratchet was clearly amused by his ridiculous effort, but when Rodimus bit a finger to tug it down to a more accessible level, he didn't pull away. "Oh, that's cheap," Ratchet muttered.

Rodimus clumsily mouthed over the plates of the digits, trying to get his tongue under the tips so he could suck them into his mouth, but the way Ratchet just sort of limply allowed his hand to hang off his knee didn't make it easy. 

This _had_ to be working. He could feel the subtle tremble in Ratchet's hand as he finally managed to get the index finger into his mouth; Ratchet helped him out and added the middle finger himself.

Rodimus might have otherwise not been able to get so into blowing a couple of fingers, but given his desperate state, he pulled out all the stops. Rodimus dragged his tongue along them and sucked hard and took them so deep into his mouth he would've gagged had he had any of that coding left to speak of, and he moaned as needily as if it were his own spike in his mouth.

When Rodimus finally heard the sound of Ratchet's panel sliding open, he pulled off Ratchet's fingers with a ridiculous speed. The sight of Ratchet's hard spike spun his spark in his chest, and he was so intensely overcome with lust that his processor verged on incoherence.

"Put it in my mouth," Rodimus begged, drooling and panting as he threw himself against Ratchet's lap. "Ratchet, let me suck you, please, let me drink your —"

Mercifully, Ratchet rescued Rodimus from his hopeless flopping by taking his own spike into his hand and brusquely shoving it into Rodimus's mouth.

Ratchet was thick enough that it wasn't very practical to try to take much more than the head into his mouth, but Rodimus tried his damnedest all the same. He wanted to choke on it, drown in the transfluid, break his jaw if he had to — he settled for messily sucking and drooling around his girth instead.

The taste of the metal and the heat of Ratchet's building charge was intoxicating. Rodimus worked his head up and down the little distance it could travel, making both a racket and a mess. He'd long abandoned any pretense of technique or finesse.

Rodimus was only startled out of his trance by a hand on his crown. "C'mon," Ratchet interrupted. Rodimus let Ratchet fall from his mouth with a wet pop, and looked up to him expectantly. "Did you forget what you came for?"

 _Oh, yeah._ Rodimus had sort of lost track of himself. He loved having a huge slab of metal in his mouth. "Wh— I — help me up?"

Ratchet nodded, and finally, _finally,_ gave Rodimus the assistance he needed to clumsily pull himself astride Ratchet's lap. The medic's hard and glistening spike slid up against his own, and _sparks_ crackled out of his array until his head fell back and he nearly sobbed and probably would've fallen back off had Ratchet not steadied his hips with firm hands. Ratchet lifted him, and he braced his forehead on Ratchet's shoulder and trembled in anticipation until he finally felt Ratchet's spike part him again, and he slammed down brutally hard, filling himself to the brim. 

_God,_ it felt good. It felt so, so good. Rodimus had little energy to speak of but he summoned all of it and more, heaving himself up and down Ratchet's spike in an erratic broken rhythm. Rodimus's valve was so overfilled with Ratchet's transfluid and his own lubricant that it sloppily squelched out in spurts each time Ratchet struck the peak of his canal until it all ran out and left Ratchet's thighs absolutely drenched. 

Despite his fervor, Rodimus inevitably began to flag. It was infuriating to not be able to use his hands! Rodimus wasn't sure he wouldn't use them to rip off Ratchet's stupid head if he could. The angle wasn't quite right for him to overload like this — maybe if he could brace himself he'd be able to shift a bit and get to a core sensor but he _couldn't,_ he'd need to stimulate his spike or node but he couldn't reach those _either_ and it was the _same god damn misery all over again._ All he could pray for was a little mercy.

"Ratchet... Ratchet, please," Rodimus begged. "Jack me off. I need — I _need_ —"

"And why would I do that?"

"Because — _because_ — oh my god, please. Just _please._ I just want to _finish._ Please. Help me." Rodimus slumped against Ratchet's chest, shaking and heaving. "Please. I'm _begging_ you."

At this point, Rodimus wasn't even expecting to get it. He was fully prepared for an entire new round of denial and misery. So when Ratchet's fingers closed around his spike and began to jerk, he was surprised the shock didn't jolt his spark out of his chest.

Despite the crushing grip Ratchet applied to his spike, the magnetized wires that were _still,_ through all of this, attached to Rodimus's array showed no sign of budging — though the same couldn't be said for Rodimus when Ratchet evidently found his movements inadequate and began to slam up into his valve of his own accord.

Every one of Ratchet's hard thrusts threatened to knock Rodimus off onto the ground, and with his hands bound behind his back, he had little ability to steady and support himself. He had to settle for desperately pressing his body against Ratchet, slumped over the arm wedged between their bodies, and held on for dear life.

Rodimus had been reduced to an absolutely pathetic mess. He was drenched in his own fluids, crying, shaking, and had absolutely no remaining ability to modulate his responses — basically, he was squealing like a little bitch, humiliated but beyond the point of caring. All that mattered was that he was _finally going to get off._ He slammed back down against Ratchet in time with his harsh movements, and it was rough and it hurt and Ratchet's grip was _way_ too tight on his spike but _god_ did it feel good. Rodimus couldn't care less about whatever was coming out of his mouth — he certainly didn't even have the processing power to spare for it. 

And then finally, finally he was spilling over the edge. The overload coursed through his body like a rolling storm, electricity crackling beneath his plates. He bore down on Ratchet's spike, the walls of his valve rippling in an erratic vice grip, and when he reflexively rocked back up into tight clench of Ratchet's hand the spike inside of him raked against all of his sensitive nodes. Rodimus wasn't thinking about it when he desperately pressed his lips against Ratchet's — and while the medic snarled into his mouth, this time, he didn't push Rodimus away. Rodimus gasped and moaned and sucked Ratchet's lip into his mouth, took the metal between his teeth and bit, riding out the dissipating waves of pleasure with every point of contact he could make — he sure as hell wasn't expecting a second round to seize his body in a lightning strike.

It took him off guard, and his immediate reaction was to forcefully push away from Ratchet. As Ratchet had his back in a chair, and Rodimus did not, this resulted in Rodimus falling to the floor with a loud and painful clatter. If he wanted respite to process _that_ trauma, he didn't get it. He convulsed as the pulsing energy of this second overload wracked his overstimulated frame — it was way more than he was capable of handling. His optic feed went dead, and he couldn't hear much over the sound of his own desperate, strangled cries. It felt incredible, and completely awful.

When the surge finally began to relent, and Rodimus was coming back to his senses, he tried to reboot his optical centers. It took a few tries. When he finally brought them back online, he caught the indistinct sight of Ratchet towering over him where he lay. He scarcely had time to react before he felt Ratchet bring a strut down to step heavily on his exposed abdomen — where, notably, his depressurizing spike still lay exposed. Ratchet stopped it from retracting any further with his heel. He wasn't stepping hard enough to cause any damage, but the weight would have certainly verged on uncomfortable even if he weren't also pressing down onto Rodimus's incredibly oversensitive equipment. Rodimus writhed under the touch, not quite in _pain_ but certainly overtaxed, and gasped Ratchet's name. The medic looked down at the pathetic spectacle with disinterest, lifted a hand, and with a turn of the dial in his hand, sent Rodimus back to hell.

The next overload took him like a ton of explosives. His frame surged impossibly, impossibly hot, and the sensation triggered all of the centers for pleasure but felt nearly nothing like the sort. It was too much, too much, _too much_ and Rodimus couldn't _take_ it — he banged his head against the ground with all of his might as if that would _do_ something, as if it would make it _stop,_ and the searing pain that shot through his helm even felt almost like relief. He was crying again, probably — he had little awareness of his surroundings or his body's actions — and he was doing his best to claw Ratchet off of his body, but it was little use. All he could do was ride it out, begging for release.

"Just a moment ago you were screaming for me to let you come," Rodimus eventually heard Ratchet say, a tone of dry amusement lacing his voice. "You're going to have to make up your mind."

"Stop," Rodimus pleaded. "Stop. _Stop._ Please, stop, please —"

Rodimus braced himself for it to come again when Ratchet raised the dial in his hand once more, but after a tortuous period of anticipation, Ratchet simply turned off the device entirely. Rodimus could feel the energy dissipating from the connections along his spike. Rodimus was so relieved that he sobbed even harder.

Rodimus just sort of laid there and cried for a while. It was all that he could do. He wasn't exactly _upset_ about what had happened — he didn't think he was, anyway — but it was all just so intense that every part of him felt like it was overflowing. His _entire frame_ tingled like a limb woken up after a cable pinched too long — it was _excruciating,_ and thrashing helped no better than sitting still. His only option was to wait for it to pass, so he cried, and cried, and cried.

He wasn't sure how long he lay like that on the cold floor of Ratchet's operating room, but it felt like it may as well have been forever. Even after the agony left him, Rodimus felt disconnected and broken. His optics were on, but couldn't focus, and he wasn't sure if his audial receptors were working at all. If Ratchet was making any noise, he couldn't hear it.

Rodimus received the first indication that Ratchet was even still there when he felt his body being hauled up off of the ground and, surprisingly gently, moved to the slab in the center of the room. He allowed himself to lay supine and motionless as Ratchet's hands wandered his frame, clinically, checking all his joints and seams for injuries. His arm was snapped back into place. The inhibitor around his spike was removed and his panels wiped clean and closed. He felt delicate fingers lift his chin and turn his head, and the painless chill of a thin metal instrument slipping between the fine cables of his neck and up — terrifyingly _up_ — until something inside of him _clicked,_ and at once, the sound around him came back to life. It seemed deafening in contrast to the silence. Rodimus jumped at every one of Ratchet's heavy footfalls around the operating table. The medic performed the same procedure on the other side.

"Your audio just got physically disconnected when you started hitting your head," Ratchet assured him, as if it were supposed to come as a comfort that he _only_ had his cables popped out by his own insanely powerful electrical surge. "It doesn't look like you have any damage to your hardware."

Rodimus tried rebooting his optics again, and this time, that seemed to do the trick — he managed to get a clear image of Ratchet looking down at him, wearing an expression of an interesting mix of "smug" and "concerned". When Rodimus tried to speak, nothing but static came out. He rebooted _that_ system, too. After an embarrassing period of struggling, he was finally able to ask, "What did you _do_ to me?"

Ratchet looked over to the machine in question. "Oh, that's just a machine that can limit and control charge levels in isolated areas. Critical for certain surgeries, especially around the brain module, spark and T-Cog. Works for overload denial, too."

"Was, uh, _hardware damage_ likely?"

"If I'd pushed you any further than that, probably." After a moment of pause, he added, "Nothing I couldn't have fixed right here. Good choice of location. Uh... haha."

"Wow, exciting," Rodimus replied. He was legitimately unsure whether or not he meant it to be sarcastic. 

He sat up a little as he watched Ratchet move around the room, rummaging. It was an effort, and took some time, but he'd managed to actually move his torso into an upright position by the time Ratchet turned back to face him with a small portion of energon.

Rodimus was still shaking uncontrollably, he discovered, as he attempted to raise a hand to accept the offering. The prospect of holding an energon cube was just completely out of the question. Ratchet had to hold him steady and put it to his lips and help him drink it down. It was just a basic unit of fuel, but he may as well have been sucking miracle juice out of Primus's spike.

"I still may have taken things too far," Ratchet observed. "I'm sorry. I take it this wasn't what you were expecting when you asked me to _destroy_ you, but — _well._ "

Rodimus had to take a good amount of time to think about it. His whole head was messed up, and he hadn't had any time to really unpack everything that had just happened — but when he got down to the central issue, he found that it required barely any deliberation at all. Rodimus was forced to conclude that what had just happened to him was easily the most intense and incredible thing he had ever experienced in his entire life.

"That was — that was awful, and _amazing,_ " he choked out. "I've never felt... I've never felt anything like that. I've never felt so... so... **alive.** Sweet _Adaptus,_ I though I would _die,_ I — _god._ I needed that."

Rodimus let himself fall back against the operating table with a tremendous sigh. His battery was running low — he would have to recharge soon. He wished he were back in his quarters with his berth, or at least a recharge slab. He got the feeling that Ratchet wouldn't be down for spooning and pillow talk, though. Oh well. Maybe if he called Drift...

"Your systems seem fine now, but come back around if anything starts acting up," Ratchet announced.

"What, you're kicking me out already? Talk about cold, Doc."

"Just leave, Rodimus," Ratchet sighed.

It was easier said than done, but Rodimus managed to stand up and limp pathetically out of the operating room. The horrified look that Ambulon gave him made him wonder what he must look like.

In the interest of not letting anyone else find out before he did, Rodimus hurried directly back to his quarters. Drift was probably still there, he figured — the guy hadn't gone back to charge in his own room even once since Rodimus made it back from Tellectus. 

Drift was asleep when Rodimus arrived, but his low alert threshold woke him up as soon as Rodimus stepped inside. His reaction mirrored Ambulon's.

"What _happened_ to you?" Drift asked, practically rushing to Rodimus's side. It was well timed, because Rodimus needed someone to catch him when his joints wobbled.

"Oh, I got Ratchet to bang me," Rodimus boasted from the supportive safety of Drift's arms.

Drift kind of just stared at Rodimus with an open mouth and dim optics. When he spoke, his voice was small. "You look like you were attacked."

"Haha, yeah, well, it turns out old Ratchet frags like a monster truck. God, that was amazing."

"I don't want to talk about Ratchet. Please," Drift said; he gently disentangled himself from Rodimus once the captain found his footing again.

What was his deal? Drift had always been fine with Ratchet. Wait, was it... "Oh man, dude, were _you_ into him?" Rodimus deduced. "I totally didn't mean to encroach on your game, dude."

"I — that's not —"

"I know you guys have some sort of history or something, it's cool. I mean, you totally have dibs. I would've backed off if I'd known. I'll let you have him —"

Drift covered his face in his hands. "Please just shut up."

"Wow, sorry," Rodimus said. "I was just trying to —"

"Let's go to the wash," Drift said forcefully. "You look like — you really need to wash off and paint. Your thighs are covered in — I can see the — just — let's go, okay?"

Rodimus rolled his optics. "Sure, whatever," he said, and hobbled his way over to his quarters' washracks.

The warm spray of solvent on his body was an immense relief. Rodimus just sort of stood there for a while as it ran over his face and between his plates, washing away the copious volumes of fluid splattering his chassis. He only thought to clean out his interface array when Drift gently urged him to. 

Drift moved on to the body work once Rodimus had cleaned up. It took quite a long time for him to hammer out every dent and fill in every scratch; Rodimus was covered in dings practically head to strut. The grooves scratched into his shoulders were particularly deep, but Drift seemed to know the right tricks.

When that was done, Drift worked to buff off Ratchet's transfers and replace them with fresh paint. He concentrated with a tight-lipped expression; Drift was always so much more thorough than Rodimus ever was fixing himself up. Rodimus wouldn't even bother removing the transfers before painting over them most of the time — he'd just wait until it looked a little too chunky down there and redo his whole legs in one go. It was faster, and nobody really noticed a bit of buildup in that area when it came down to it.

"I'm _beat,_ " Rodimus announced, once Drift made the final touches and the paint had dried. "Haha, obviously. Let's go charge, yeah?"

Drift had no response to that; he simply put away the tools, and followed Rodimus when he turned to go.

Rodimus ambled back into his quarters with a spring in his step and took his time in stretching leisurely out on his berth. He knew that his whole body was going to be screaming in agony by the next time he woke up, but for now the dull ache was kind of pleasant. "Hey, I've been thinking," Rodimus said.

Drift came to sit on the berth next to Rodimus. "Yeah?"

Rodimus rolled over onto his back, and looked up to Drift with a fond smile. "You wanna try spark merging after all?" he ventured, reaching out to play with Drift's fingers.

Well, that was evidently not the question Drift was expecting. He looked shocked, and recoiled at Rodimus's touch. "W-what?"

"I dunno, I was just thinking, when I was with Ratchet — sorry. It's just, he wouldn't _kiss_ me, and it was so ridiculous, and now I'm thinking — is _that_ what I sound like? Like I'm making a big deal out of nothing?"

"I —"

"I mean, I don't really know. It was weird that one time, but maybe it was just him. It could be good with you. We could try it, if you wanted."

"Rodimus, I..." 

Drift stared down at Rodimus for a long time. Rodimus could see the heat in his face. Drift was absently rubbing his chest, over his spark — he probably didn't even notice he was doing it. Eventually, he shook his head. "No."

"Aww, why not?"

"I don't... I don't want to know what's in your spark."

Rodimus laughed. "Why? What's the worst that could be in there, _really?_ "

Drift's mouth opened and closed as he struggled with what to say. It was cute how shy Drift could be — he seemed to immediately regret what he blurted out. "Rodimus, I _love_ you."

"Haha, yeah, man. I love you too, dude."

Drift quietly looked down at Rodimus, and Rodimus smiled back. 

After a time, Drift pushed away and lay down on his side. He must've been tired. Rodimus turned to slip his arms around Drift's waist and nuzzle his face into the back of his neck. "Mmn, Drift."

Drift shivered in his arms.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," Rodimus said. "I get it. It was just a thought, that's all."

"Thank you," Drift softly muttered.

They needed to charge soon, but Rodimus wanted to hold onto Drift a little bit longer. He searched for a different subject. "It's been a while since we talked about..." He paused to rethink his phrasing. "How's Chromedome?"

"He's fine," Drift answered. "He thinks it won't be long now."

Rodimus pressed his lips to Drift's warm metal. "That's good. I'm glad he's good." He let his optics shut off, and relaxed into the heat of Drift's frame against his chest. "I was worried about this, but you've done a good job. Honestly, I don't know where I'd be without you." Rodimus laughed softly. "Thank you, Drift. For everything."

Drift didn't answer.


End file.
